


Even in Sleep

by waterfallliam



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Background Hoshi Sato/T'Pol, Childhood Trauma, Episode Related, M/M, Original Character(s), Sad, Sad Ending, Season/Series 03, fast burn, supplementary history
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-14
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-01-30 06:15:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 45,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21423529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterfallliam/pseuds/waterfallliam
Summary: “I have some experience, or rather, memories of building the engine for Starfleet. My—his—memories.” Sim looks down at his PADD. “I figure I should have remembered you by now, what with how Captain Archer says we’re good friends and all.”
Relationships: Malcolm Reed/Sim
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

Seeing Trip so lifeless on the bed in front of him feels wrong.

Even in sleep, Trip’s whole body moves with him, clenching into a ball, his hands grasping whatever is nearest. All that time ago in the shuttlepod it had been Malcolm. Huddled together for warmth, Trip’s fingers had burrowed down through soft blankets, wrapping around his arm, drawing him close. He had felt every involuntary twitch and shiver, pressed against his back with his entire body, but still out of reach.

Now all that stirs is the piston assembly of Trip’s chest, powering his deep, steady breaths. His stillness sinks down to Malcolm’s bones, rooting him to the spot. _Alive, Trip is alive_, he reminds himself. “Is there really no hope that he’ll wake up on his own?”

Phlox’s tunic rustles as he comes to stand beside him. “None. The damage to his neural tissue is too great, I’m afraid. He won’t wake up without a graft.”

“I volunteer.” The words scratch at his throat, reminding him that he has spent the past twelve hours fixing the worst of the damage from the explosion. “If I’m a compatible donor—”

“That’s very noble of you, but I’m afraid it has to be an exact match. That’s why the captain agreed to… creating a clone.”

Clenched around his crossed arms, his fingers feel numb. “A clone?”

"Yes, I've already started the process, but he'll need two and a half more days until he can leave the maturation chamber. He’ll be none for worse for it, I’m sure."

Confusion sinks through him like fog. “How exactly is this going to work?”

“The Lyssarian Desert Larvae possesses the unique ability to take on the DNA of another Lyssarian, or as it turns out, a human, and grow into a mimetic clone. Its lifespan is only about fifteen days, so Mr. Tucker’s simbiot will be able to donate the neural tissue he needs to recover in about ten days’ time.”

Malcolm latches onto the parts of the explanation he understands. “He’ll be genetically identical?” The same slope of his brow, the mole on his cheek, the curve of his smile—

“Yes, though he’ll grow and learn much faster. The operation shouldn’t prove fatal, it will be like donating a kidney.”

Emotion stirs inside him, the urge to both cry and shout at the same time making his eye twitch. A human being, grown to donate part of himself?

He remembers paper pages, rough under his fingers, glancing out of the window at the torrential rain, safe only because of a thin sheet of glass. The book had the same premise, of people born to be organ donors. He struggles to remember the title, what was it? _Don’t Let Me Go_?

A novel like that could only have been published before the Eugenic Wars. Any kind of genetic manipulation in humans, or even its duplication, is now strictly taboo. There would be no question of if they had souls, or explorations of their lives. Though not to the same degree in every culture, for humanity to embrace its newfound maturity there had been the need for an inner demon to be overcome, an old hubris to be left behind. 

“After that,” Phlox continues, “he can live out the rest of his life, none the worse for it.”

“And the captain approved this?”

Even as he says the words, he knows it is a rhetorical question. Yes, of course Archer would approve this. They’re on a mission to save Earth, to stop an alien force for whom they only have a slim lead: their name, the Xindi. Since that weapon cut a line through the American continent they have been operating under military parameters and not caring what it costs them and their morals, much less anyone else.

“Not lightly.” Phlox sounds sombre.

The decision sits in Malcolm’s stomach like a stone. Giving up his own life in the line of duty, to save those he cares for even, is one thing. But creating one?

“Come see.” Phlox gestures, and Malcolm follows as if in a dream, watching him pull back a curtain to reveal a tank filled with red liquid.

On their better days, he and Archer temper each other, erring for caution from both the worst versions of themselves, and of anyone they might encounter. But with every day that passes since the orders to seek out and destroy the makers of the weapon, he recognises his captain less and less. His character has not changed, and Malcolm suspects he chose to make this decision on his own to save the rest of them from having to live with it.

Except, they will. Including Malcolm. Including Trip. Including the simbiot. The foetus in the tank is not larger than a grain of rice and does not look distinctly human yet, but he is already a member of the crew. He is not even a child, and Malcolm cannot protect him from the life he is being born into.

“He won’t have Trip’s memories,” Malcolm says.

“No. There are species to whom genetic memory is fundamental; Lyssarians are one of them. Humans can pass on epigenetic patterns, but the ability to pass on specific experiences or skills through DNA… it would be unprecedented, to say the least.” The usual turning of the cogs Malcolm all but hears coming from inside Phlox’s head are absent.

Sickbay is no quieter than usual, with its background hum and chatter of the various creatures Phlox keeps on hand, but the air feels heavier, almost electrified, as if sensing the way the reality is slowly shifting around them.

Phlox smiles at him expectantly, jolting Malcolm back into the present.

“Did you have a suggestion for a name?” His tone implies that this is not the first time he is asking the question. “The crew have been quite eager to suggest their favourites. I’m considering the merits of a raffle.”

“A raffle!” The words explode out of him. Of all the things to think about! He pinches the bridge of his nose, hard.

“I had rather thought you would have less of a problem with this than the captain,” Phlox frowns.

“It’s not him I have the problem with,” he says, gesturing feebly at the tank. “It’s what we are already doing to him.”

“Ah.” The last of Phlox’s bravado drains out of him. “He’ll have a good life, we can make sure of that.”

That was what it had come down to in the novel, too. How lucky that a select few, for a short time, had been granted humane lives through the hard work of others. It is not, could never be, meaningless—but not everybody is so fortunate, even as Starfleet makes proud speeches about how far they’ve come. It’s not meaningless.

“Right,” Malcolm says.

Sensing, or perhaps deciding, that this is the end of their conversation, Phlox wanders off to take care of an eel or bat or some other such creature. The tiredness that has settled into Malcolm’s bones is catching up with him, fast. Swaying on his feet slightly, he resigns himself to a hasty meal and crashing into bed. More repairs will have to wait until morning.

He is still standing in front of the tank, the slow beep of Trip’s heart monitor a lullaby that seeps through his suddenly permeable body. He touches his hand to the glass in front of him, careful not to conceal the growing baby from his view. The glass is warm, and he expects to feel the faint rush of blood, like when he had listened to his mother’s pregnant stomach as a boy, but there is nothing but the unnervingly smooth texture of the glass.

He closes the curtain.

Before leaving, he stops by Trip’s bed, only stepping close so that Phlox won’t hear him speak. “Rest well, Commander.”

He wants to reach for his hand, to comfort him, or tug him back into the land of living where he belongs. Instead he smooths down his uniform and turns to leave.

_Never Let Me Go,_ that was the book.

“Eyes on the hull, Ensign,” Malcolm says, his words floating across the open comm channel.

It’s the third day since _Enterprise _ground to a halt in the middle of the anomaly. After getting the ship’s sensors back online, their scans had shown particles being magnetically drawn to the ship, like moths to a light in the dead of night. Eventually the magnetic force of the build-up would be so great that even with the engines restored, it is uncertain if they will be able to escape its influence.

Rerouting auxiliary power to get the airlocks working takes the better part of a day, but Malcolm finally receives the all clear to take a team for a spacewalk to investigate the build-up.

“Aye, sir,” Ensign Nadyezhda Sadir replies, formal but fond.

In all the practice runs he had done with his team, she had seemed the shakiest out of all of the new recruits. She has her space legs, but in an emergency, seconds can make all the difference. This mission is critical, but not dangerous or subject to intense time pressure: perfect to help her come into her own.

Their magboots click underfoot, and Malcolm keeps his eyes glued to the where his steps land among the growing outcrops. The science division had calculated that they would have an hour before the particles drawn to the magboots’ fields would start significantly impeding use.

“We need to find a piece large enough to provide the science division with ample opportunity to run tests,” Malcolm says, trying to swallow the itch in his throat.

Though they had suited up twenty minutes earlier, the padding still feels heavy under his suit. It clings to him, layers of insulation and protection that ironically make him short of breath. A year has passed since he was pinned to the hull by a Romulan mine, but it creeps up on him sometimes, remembering the helplessness that had threatened to overwhelm him, the unending dark of space ready to swallow him up. The pull of the EV suit tugs it all back up from the dredges of his mind, curling in his gut like seaweed threatening to strangle him.

Malcolm does not regret his aborted sacrifice—he would do it all over again, staring down the impossible emptiness even as his mind howls in fear. He feels at home on the _Enterprise _in a way he never has before. His need to protect everyone on board, to protect the ship itself, feels wound around his bones, supporting his every movement, giving him a strength he wasn’t sure he had.

And despite the danger, Archer had reached for him.

“What do you think it is, sir?” 

It takes Malcolm a few seconds to parse her words, willing himself to blink away his memories, curling his fists into steely knots to draw himself back to the present.

“The particles are magnetic, so there’s probably iron, nickel or cobalt.” He resists the impulsive urge to give the nearest burgeoning clump a good kick. “It definitely looks solid.”

“I bet there’s a component we haven’t discovered yet.” Her voice crackles over the comm, but he hears the light note to her words. He realises that he can’t remember the last time he heard anyone talk with interest and awe.

The thrill of the unknown, the gentle yet demanding drive of curiosity—squashed by the shadow of their mission. Malcolm’s gut churns with how wrong it feels. He could have joined any branch of the military other than the navy, but instead he chose Starfleet, he chose to look to the stars. But even the purple sky above him now fills him with dread instead of wonder.

If only they could be here for first contact, not as a desperate measure borne of fear.

“What about this one?” Nadia asks, pointing to a clump that juts up into the vacuum. “Looks pretty large.”

She smiles, the warmth reaching him through two layers of clear polycarbonate, soothing his stomach to a simmer. And he’d thought that he was going to be the one offering her support. He shoots her a half smile in appreciation.

Crouching down, he takes a closer look, unable to resist a forceful prod with a gloved finger. It definitely feels like metal.

“This is will do nicely, well spotted Ensign.”

He pulls the markers out of the pouch on his belt and looks for the most vulnerable places to aim a phase-pistol. The more easily they can blast a piece off, the better. The individual particles being drawn through the vacuum are too small to see with the naked eye, but he imagines them all the same, tiny specks on invisible pathways, heading to become something greater than they are on their own.

He only hopes they can get the engines back online before they find out what that _something_ is.

“There.” He finishes placing two markers on the best spots to aim. They shine like pennies in the purple haze. “We’ll try it on stun first.”

Standing, he unclips his phase-pistol from his belt in one fluid motion and gestures for Nadia to do the same. They stand an arm apart, pistols raised.

“Ready, sir.” Her voice is as steady as her hand. She’s one of the best shots on the ship.

“On three,” Malcolm says, then counts down.

Two red beams hit the metal build-up, the energy discharge slowly but surely cutting into the metal. But when they lower them again, there’s only a small dent.

“Set to kill. On my signal.”

“Da, yessir.”

He thumbs the setting and raises the pistol again, forcing his shoulders to relax, keeping his grip firm but not rigid. Using his free hand, he gives the signal. It takes three blasts to cut through the majority of the metal.

“Now comes the tricky part.” Once separated, the metal will be immediately drawn towards the hull. He intends to intercept it.

Despite discussing it during the briefing, Nadia looks nervous. He makes sure to catch her eye. “You’ve got this.”

She nods.

He crouches to get into position, staring up at Nadia’s phase-pistol. The safety is on, and it’s pointing at the hull, but all too soon she will be aiming it at the build-up in front of him. “Ready when you are.”

Nadia sets the pistol to stun and raises it with both hands. Purple light reflects off the barrel, but it also catches the embroidery thread in her hijab, making her shine brighter than any distant star. 

When she begins to countdown, the world around him fades away. He hears her voice and focuses on the numbers. He sees the energy beam, but is far enough away that he does not feel the heat through his suit. He breathes in and out, slowly, measured. The phaser continues to fire.

He feels his hands move before he sees them stretch out in front of him, catching the falling hunk of metal. He scrambles to stand, pushing upward with his legs as hard as he can. The mag boots absorb his kick, keeping him tethered. Heavy in his arms, the metal pulls him towards he hull.

He grins at Nadia. “Nicely done.”

They carry the metal back to the airlock together, sharing the burden to make it less cumbersome. With enough time, it would defeat them. Just like the anomaly. Like any of the anomalies. Strange, how the apparent necessity of their mission strips away to reveal a question of survival, desperation tangible and visceral. None of them have even met a single Xindi.

“Sir?” Nadia asks, breaking the silence.

“Yes?” He carefully takes another step forward.

“Do you… do think we’ll make it?”

The cords around his bones tighten, tension running through every inch of his body.

“I think,” he ponders his words, “that a situation like this could have happened anywhere, on any mission. It’s a risk we take every day on _Enterprise, _it’s why we’re aboard her.”

He has the next sentence ready, a reassurance about their training, their skill. About how they are damn good at what they do.

But what _are _they doing?

“I want to tell you you’ll get to go home and see your wife again, go see the Great Lakes again.” But he doesn’t know that for sure. None of them do. Nothing is ever certain, or without its own risks.

She smiles at him, a small and wobbly thing that makes their impossible situation all the worse. The whole team has seen the picture of her and Sasha posing in front of a rented cabin, proudly stuck on the inside of her locker. It makes him smile, tempering the emptiness in his chest with a bubble of warmth and affection.

“We’ll beat this,” he says, because they have to.

If they cannot fix the engine and escape the anomaly, they will never find out who the Xindi are, or what the hell this mission actually is.

Back in the airlock, they place the sample in the right decontamination compartment so the lab can get its hands on it as soon as possible.

Helping each other peel off the EV suits and going through the decontamination protocols passes in a blur. All routine, all normal, a strange oasis after the two months of waiting, dispersed only with reckless and militaristic missions. He couldn’t possibly call smearing gel onto Major Hayes’ back calming, at least he and Nadia can take care of themselves, making use of the privacy curtain.

After, they sit on the bunks, Nadia typing up her report or a letter or something else entirely, while he stares at a blank page, unmoving. He has very good reasons for not joining the military, but here he is, sharing the armoury with Major Hayes and watching his Captain slowly erode under the weight of fear and pressure. It’s not supposed to be like this.

The page stares back at him.

He gives up, takes a nap.

Later, they’re waiting out the last hour before Phlox releases them back into the rest of the ship. His PADD is beside him, a neat, perfunctory report typed up and sent to Archer, destined to anonymity amongst the thousands of others in the ship’s archive.

Through the walls of the ship he hears a shriek, followed by the unmistakable sound of a baby crying. He presses his thumbs into his temples, his elbows into his knees, and his feet against the floor. The tension is back, a smothering grip trying to pull him under. The urge to escape back onto the hull is almost as strong as the urge to try to override the door and scoop the youngster into his arms.

What he would do then, he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t move until he hears the click of the comm followed by T’Pol’s voice.

“Lieutenant Reed.”

Her calm monotone soothes his fraying thoughts. Forcing himself to stand, he winces at how stiff he is. Maybe he should try and convince Phlox that an exercise bike would not go amiss in decon.

Shuffling up to the window, he wishes for more to wear than his underclothes, slippers and a robe. Everyone is dressed like this when in decon, Nadia with the addition of a regulation blue leggings and hijab she had pulled a face at, some people choosing to swath themselves in blankets like a cape, which had been the only time he has ever seen Phlox roll his eyes. There is no reason for him to feel embarrassed, but he still has to stop himself from retying the knot around his waist.

“Commander.”

“Using the sample you retrieved, we have determined that while the metal is not actively harming the hull, its compound effect will increase over time, posing significant danger to all the ship’s systems.”

They’ve just acquired a deadline on fixing the ship. Bloody brilliant. “Do you know how long we have?”

“Not yet.” Her voice lilts slightly, betraying her discomfort.

The accumulation will only increase, slowly sealing them in a magnetic tomb. “What is the metal made of?”

“It is mainly comprised of ferric ions, but the other elements are unknown to us. They are, however, highly charged.”

He glances at Nadia, who despite the dire news, shoots him a pleased smile. She was right about the particles.

A fresh wave of wailing from sickbay rings out. T’Pol doesn’t bat an eyelid.

“He… what is his name?” Malcolm asks.

In all the commotion, he hasn’t found the time to visit sickbay again. Or maybe he didn’t want to. The red glow of the tank has infiltrated his dreams like an oil slick, slippery against the surface of his mind, colouring everything he sees. Archer’s soft smile stretches into something cruel and predatory, every arc of sparks in Engineering threatens to trigger another explosion, even the ship beneath his feet feels unsteady.

“Doctor Phlox has named him Sim.”

Malcolm needs a moment to process. “Like Simbiot?”

“A fair assumption.”

His heart clenches**.** His own name leads back to dove, a symbol of peace, a tricky irony he is appreciative of. Or in Vulcan: serenity—he never knows how to feel about that one. But Sim has been named for his function, his purpose, narrowing the definition of his existence just that bit further.

“Lieutenant, Ensign Sato asked me to remind you of the dinner she is cooking tonight. I am also invited, I hope that is amenable to you.”

Hoshi had mentioned it, unsure about whether T’Pol would welcome her invitation or not. He feels an abrupt surge of joy, Hoshi has been mooning over T’Pol for almost as long as they have been friends.

“Of course, Commander. That would be lovely.”

Then he’s left with his own thoughts as the cries slowly settle down.

He’s precisely ten minutes early, even after stopping for a change of clothes and a shower to get all the grease off. Engineering is a chaotic ecosystem of repairs, shouting, and mounting pressure as it had become clear that they were going to be stuck here longer than initially hoped. As much the need to be doing something—anything—to help itches under his skin, he’s grateful for a reason to unwind.

Not hesitating, he presses the doorbell.

“Malcolm!” Hoshi greets him with a grin, waiting until he’s inside her quarters for an affectionate one armed hug.

“Smells good,” he says, following her to perch on the edge of the bed as she goes back to prodding at the pan on her stove.

She points her wooden spoon at him. “And you’re early.”

“Just wanted a moment of quiet with you before the Commander arrives.” He has been hoping to for the opportunity to speak with her privately, to check in about how she is after the debacle with Tarquin. Desperate for information about the Xindi, Archer had irresponsibly left her all alone on the planet.

“Oh, you really don’t mind that she’s coming, do you? I’m sure she’d understand if not.”

“I think it’s great she’s coming. I just wanted a moment for us.” Malcolm looks at the floor, the words sounding odd when he says them.

Hoshi sits next to him and bumps their shoulders. “You sap.” The tension in the room dissolves.

“How are you holding up? After everything with…” He searches her face, but finds no clues as to how she’s feeling.

“Tarquin. It’s alright, I’m not afraid to say his name. He’s just a very sad lonely man with a bad sense of boundaries.”

Malcolm sighs. “We should still never have left you without backup.”

“No, but I think I managed okay.”

“You did brilliantly.” This time Malcolm bumps their shoulders.

It’s been over two years since they met and first embarked to explore the depths of space. He remembers one of their early missions, bodies hanging from the ceiling, sown and harvested like fields of wheat. They’d all been horrified, some of them had just been better at hiding it than others.

Archer had pushed Hoshi to the wolves, begging her to try to talk to them. T’Pol’s calm had gotten through to her better, allegory and reassurance hitting their mark and helping Hoshi to see what was there all along. She grows into herself more with every passing day; they all do, so infinitesimally that he thinks everyone must sometimes forget it was ever different.

Hoshi pokes at the bedspread. “Well, we don’t know how useful the information is yet.”

“No, I mean _you _did brilliantly.”

She smiles, the corners of her eyes wrinkling just so, radiating warmth.

“As for the information—”

The chime of the doorbell interrupts him.

“I’d, ah, better get that.” Hoshi doesn’t move, suddenly clutching at her bedspread.

“I dare say you should.”

She twists at the fabric. “You don’t think—”

“Hoshi, she wants to be here.” He nods at the door. “Go on.”

Clenching and unclenching her hands, she stands. Like a ripple across a lake, he watches how her steadying breaths slowly become a foundation of composure. It doesn’t hide all her nerves, just stops the ripples from growing into an all-consuming wave.

“Commander, you made it!”

“We are not on duty, T’Pol is fine. Lieutenant Reed,” she turns to greet him.

She’s changed out of her _Enterprise _uniform, courtesy of a field enlistment and promotion from Archer as soon as she’d announced she was severing ties with the Science Academy. Her Vulcan robes are dark, the sweeping fabric embroidered with a fine golden thread in a subtly resplendent geometric pattern.

“It rather defeats the purpose of leaving rank at the door if you’re still going to call me lieutenant,” he quips.

She raises an eyebrow but acquiesces with a nod. Like so many Vulcans, her mannerisms could be easily interpreted as aloof or arrogant, especially compared to human norms. Unlike some of the Vulcans Malcolm has met over the years, that kind of interpretation could not be further from the truth. She obviously cares for the crew, showing it in her own way. She is rarely blunt, but Malcolm appreciates how direct she is.

“Your robes are so beautiful,” Hoshi blushes.

“Dressing appropriately is a sign of respect for the host,” T’Pol says. “Your quarters are much changed from when I was last here, the décor is most pleasing.”

Malcolm turns to the cupboard to rummage around for some bowls, hiding his smile. Even for T’Pol, that was very formal. Is she feeling nervous?

“Nemaiyo.” Hoshi bounces on her feet a little. “I just need to finish adding a couple of things to the broth, and the meal can be served in a few minutes. Please, sit.”

Malcolm waves off an offer of help, and finishes lining up the cutlery for three place settings on the fold out table. Hoshi had also retrieved three foldout chairs, all temporarily borrowed from the storeroom’s offworld expedition supplies. It’s cramped, but cosy. He touches the _Enterprise _crest on his chair before sitting.

“We are hoping to have sufficient injectors online for an engine test within two days,” T’Pol says, sitting ramrod straight with her hands flat against her thighs.

“Can we predict the effects of the build up?” The polaric field undoubtedly means trouble for the plasma flow.

“Yes, but we are not optimistic. There is a significantly high chance we will not be able to achieve warp while still in the field.”

“And impulse?”

“If we can achieve stability for the plasma after the fusion reaction.”

Malcolm nods. Either way, the EPS grids needs fixing.

“Okay, I hope you’re both hungry.” Hoshi places a pot on the serving mat, opening the lid with a flourish.

He leans forward and steam hits him in the face, the smell of cooked vegetables and noodles rushing up to meet him.

“Smells delicious,” he says, leaning back again.

Hoshi exchanges her oven mitts for a ladle and tongs and joins them at the table.

Malcolm eagerly holds out his bowl. Not all of Hoshi’s more experimental meals are successes, but the meals she cooks well rival chef’s abilities. Not that he would ever let that pass between his lips within hearing distance of the kitchen.

T’Pol copies him, and Hoshi serves them both. The udon is satisfyingly soft and sticky, the broth rich despite being without its usual meaty components.

“I was with Sim earlier, the strangest thing happened,” Hoshi says.

T’Pol’s eyes track back to Hoshi’s face from where’s she’s been slowly using a spoon to twirl a noodle onto her chopsticks.

“We were reading _War of the Worlds_ and he knew how the story would end before we were even halfway through.”

Malcolm hums. “Phlox did say something about genetic memory.” He takes another bite, carrot and spinach crunching between his teeth.

“It’s never been recorded in humans before,” Hoshi says, “but Phlox is looking into whether it has anything to do with the Lyssarian larvae.”

“A genetic transformation perhaps,” T’Pol suggests.

Retroviruses and vectors Malcolm can manage to keep up with, he knows about the applications and consequences of genetic manipulation, but that is the limit of his knowledge when it comes to genetics.

“What does that mean?”

T’Pol answers, “When Commander Tucker’s DNA was first introduced to the Lyssarian Larvae, both human and Lyssarian DNA were present. Some of the Lyrissarian genetic material could have been transferred to Sim’s DNA.”

Malcolm sets his chopsticks down. “Has this kind of thing happened before?”

“There is not much research into the larvae due to the illegality of creating simbiots on Lyssaria. The process has never before been recorded to cross gene pools, but it is possible that this may be a typical phenomenon when growing simbiots with DNA from a different species.”

“Wait, this procedure is illegal and Archer went through with it?” Hoshi frowns.

The harsh discomfort of knowing he’s serving under a man he’s no longer sure he can trust is ripped back into focus, the same way a storm breaks on a grey day.

“Technically the Expanse is not in legal purview of Lyssaria or Earth and their respective bans.” T’Pol says, delicately trying another morsel.

“But it was banned for ethical reasons,” Hoshi confirms glumly. “I can’t believe he agreed to it.”

“He is convinced it is the only way.” Despite her Vulcan composure, the slow blink of her eyes gives away her sadness.

They all feel it. He’s slowly drifting away from them, further and further, even as they share the same bridge, breathe the same air. The line of his shoulders is no longer assured, but heavy with the weight of an entire planet. No one can ever truly be Atlas; or should be asked to be.

“It can’t be.” Hoshi sounds lost.

She’s been friends with him longer than any of them have, even Trip or Porthos. Malcolm has never had a friendship so close or long lasting before _Enterprise, _but imagining losing any of them now—knowing Trip is dying on the bed in Sickbay feels like an oncoming ice age, subsuming him with a nullity and sadness that, if it came to the worst, wouldn’t thaw within his lifetime.

“Sim is still human,” Malcolm says. Sim’s existence and Archer’s misguided belief live in a difficult equilibrium, ends not absolving means, but also not robbing Malcolm of his compassion.

T’Pol frowns, the slant of her eyebrows uncomfortable. “Unfortunately, a human judge might find that arguable considering the ban on genetic manipulation.”

“But if his DNA is identical to Trip’s…” Hoshi murmurs.

Malcolm remembers sneaking into his father’s study as a child, while he had been away and his mother busy with Madeline. Bookcases made of dark pine wood had stretched from the floor to the ceiling, surrounding him, suffocating him with the knowledge they held that he did not yet understand.

It had been a whim, which hardcover volume he had dragged down onto the plush carpet, laying on his stomach as he ever so carefully turned the pages. He had read about the tyrant Khan and Colonel Green the butcher, looked at pictures of mushrooms clouds where cities had once stood, graphs tallying the purges, accounts of the years of consequent rationing and the saviourhood of the ban.

Unimaginable, except that he had tried starving himself the next week to see if he would have made it.

“Earth has never reacted favourably to genetic enhancements in sentient life, or copies of it.” T’Pol says. He catches her watching him as he pushes his bowl away.

It had been a few months after starting his training at the academy that Malcolm remembered the hardbound book in his father’s study. They’d just been on a training exercise, left to fend for themselves in a pocket of stubborn wilderness. Hunger remembers, eroding years in between, forgetting that life had ever been different.

He’d hacked Starfleet’s redacted history files. The line was ‘those more likely to survive’ had been chosen, had been saved, but the exact details of who got to live were hidden under firewalls and passwords, all but shouting its status as a shameful secret.

Everyone knew. You knew and you didn’t know. It had all happened in accordance with legal sanctions.

“Humanity can’t stand its own reflection,” Malcolm blurts in a burst of bitterness.

Hoshi looked at him in surprise, her lips parting, but no words follow.

“Vaik vuhnaya svi' vaik terish,” T’Pol says, leaning closer. For her, that is as forward as putting a comforting hand on his arm. “That is at the heart of the Vulcan way.”

He sees acceptance in her eyes. Her support feels like shelter from the rain.

Why had she taken this mission, abandoning Vulcan and all its relentless serenity? Every world hides its own shape, assumptions that are made but rarely talked about, understood without understanding, beliefs so fundamental no one wants to question them.

“Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations,” Hoshi translates, but he already knows. He understands.

They share a look. It’s not a stretch to think that as a child Hoshi would have been under suspicion for her linguistic talent. Or that if it wasn’t so advantageous, people might not be so accepting.

Malcolm feels his stomach sink even further**.** “This is a military mission now. They’ll sweep it under the rug, just like everything else.” Excused, invisible. Forgotten. The cycle of human history.

“In the years I’ve served aboard the _Enterprise, _it has been my experience of the Captain’s character that he did not sign up for a military mission either.”

Hoshi’s mouth twists with displeasure. “I’d follow Jon to hell, but…”

They all would. They are all already there. But who is Jonathan Archer becoming?

“Meet me in my ready room,” Archer says over the ship’s comm, his voice cold as granite.

“Now, Sir?”

“Now.”

The connection breaks with a click, Archer not even waiting for Malcolm to confirm that he heard him.

He returns his tools on autopilot, handing the PADD with his open assignment back to T’Pol. He’ll either pick it up again afterwards, or someone else will get it, and he’ll move onto the next most urgent task. They’re making progress, but Trip’s absence feels like a phantom limb. Despite the clanging, hissing, cajoling—all round bluster in the engine room, it still feels too quiet, too empty, without his laugh.

Hoshi catches his eye on the bridge, turning her neck from where she’s sitting in the Captain’s chair. Travis is absent from the helm, probably lending a hand down in Engineering. With everything at a dead stop, there’s only one other crew member with Hoshi, mulishly sipping her coffee by the conference table and ignoring him.

He raises his eyebrows, but Hoshi shakes her head, none the wiser about why Archer needs to see him.

Maybe Archer wants to try and draft him for his imaginary water polo team again, because for all that he racks his brains, he can’t think what he’s done these past few days to merit being called to his ready room like a schoolchild being summoned the principal’s office.

At least he can still make jokes about it, even if it’s only his head.

The stony expression Archer greets him with seems to disagree. The last warmth of humour drips right off him, slinking away and leaving him cold in anticipation.

“Lieutenant Reed, after working together for two years, I thought we had reached an understanding. Friendship, even.”

“I—_Sir._” So does Malcolm. “What is this about?”

Archer begins to pace, wearing down the same few steps he always does when he’s agitated.

“I thought, what with being stuck here, I might as well make use of my time and catch up on some reports, see if there’s any information about the Xindi I missed the first time around.”

Malcolm swallows. He has an idea where this is headed.

“Imagine my surprise when I saw your report about our visit to the mining facility.”

He had filed an official complaint after being ignored. “You were ready to torture him!”

“I _threatened_ to torture him, Lieutenant. That’s a difference I thought you of all people would be able to appreciate.” Despite knowing that Archer wants the words to sting more than he actually means them, they still do.

“But you would have.” His reasoning sounds feeble, even to himself.

“How do you know?” Archer hisses, turning to look at him directly, his eyes narrow and mean. He looks like a shadow of himself, a mirror image relying on fear and violence to get his way.

He must be so afraid, to lash out like this. He knows Jon, he doesn’t want to presume how anyone feels, but—the man he knows, the man he trusts, wouldn’t have tortured him. Wouldn’t have even considered it.

That’s who is standing in front him. Changing, but not another person. Everyone has versions of themselves living inside of them. Sometimes, making as right a choice as there can be, means embracing them. But not here, not like this.

“I know you,” Malcolm leaves his rank away, but still can’t bring himself to use his first name. “I know you don’t think that this is what we should be doing. We’re explorers. Our mission is one of peace.”

“It’s not about what we should be doing. Earth needs us to be a military operation.”

“Do they? Does nothing we do matter, as long as Earth is safe?”

Archer falters, stopping mid step and bracing himself on his desk. “I—They cut a four thousand kilometre gash across the North American continent! Over seven million people died!”

Malcolm remembers the pain in Trip’s expression, the same pain around his heart that’s he’s seen reflected back at him by so many people in the months since. “Yes. It’s awful, it’s horrifying.”

“And you would have me what, walk away and let the Earth be destroyed?

Malcolm pauses. The reflexive _no _surges up inside him like a geyser.

“We’re the only ones who can save them, Malcolm,” Archer says, but he’s not trying to inspire him, he’s pleading.

“With all due respect, they sent you out here with an impossible and irresponsible mission.” Malcolm pulls himself together, borrowed strength coiling in his stomach. “Not that I doubt this crew’s ability to do what you’re asking of them, but is this the only thing we can do? Act like one shot justifies a war against any Xindi we come across?”

Having finally spoken the words out loud, he realises how long they’ve been living inside him, slowly winding tighter, threatening to strangle him.

His gut twists every time he sees MACO equipment hanging alongside Starfleet blue and grey, a black maelstrom of shoot first and ask questions later. Hayes carries the burden of all the ghosts from his past, men more interested in strategies than who or what they serve. Malcolm can’t let them become that, can’t be a part of another chapter of humanity abandoning itself as soon as things get hard.

“Someone has to stop them building a weapon!”

“I’m not disagreeing with that, sir! But we’re going in here with our guns cocked and no idea what the hell is going on.” Restraint keeps him from shouting.

Archer holds up his hands, as if defeated, as if admitting he can no longer hold the world on his shoulders on his own. “What else can we do?”

Malcolm pours all the compassion he can into what he says next:

“I don’t know. But I know that you don’t have to do it alone. Let us help.”

Catching Malcolm’s hand in his own, Archer squeezes tightly. Malcolm has suddenly become his lifeline.

“Another BLT?” Hoshi asks, her lips curling into a smile.

Sliding back into his seat opposite Malcolm and Hoshi, Travis grins, “What can I say, I’m hungry.”

“When are you not,” Malcolm ribs. The thread binding them to normalcy is thin, but they all cling to it, as if by holding it tightly enough they can tug themselves back to a more familiar past.

“I’ve seen you snacking on power bars on the bridge,” Hoshi says.

Travis puts his hand on his chest in mock offence. “I’m always happy to share, Ensign.”

“Those things are almost as bad as emergency rations.” Hoshi twirls her fork as she speaks, gracefully spearing up an impressive number of pasta shapes.

Malcolm sneers. “The taste is alright, but they could really do something about the chalky texture.”

“See, best to take advantage of chef’s cooking.” Travis takes a rather large bite of his sandwich to make his point.

Malcolm thinks of the dish Hoshi had prepared, wishing for another serving right about now. Her grandmother’s recipe hadn’t turned out so well when she had been filling in for chef, but last night it had been perfect. She had cooked enough to give Phlox some leftovers, part of their ongoing cultural exchange. He hadn’t been brave enough to try all the Denobulan delicacies Phlox had prepared last time, but some of the deserts had been surprisingly and deliciously tart.

“Is making a sandwich really cooking,” Hoshi asks, tapping her finger against her chin in an exaggerated fashion.

“You have to fry the resequenced bacon,” Travis says. “That alone is an art form.”

That’s his cue to jump in, shaking a thoughtful finger. “A valid point!”

They run through the same argument every few weeks. Chef has become quite an expert on making the squishy, resequenced protein their replicators can produce taste almost like the real thing.

“Alright, alright. Any news from the bridge, Captain Mayweather?” Hoshi drops her voice an octave on the last two words.

“Enjoying the chair?” Malcolm interjects, smiling innocently as Travis narrows his eyes at him a little before swallowing.

“It was fine. We got bored so we listened to the field, but it was… strange.”

“Strange strange or… strange?” Hoshi asks, dragging the words out to different lengths.

“Uh,” Travis hesitates, “Whichever one is strangest.”

Hoshi is already putting her fork down. “Do you have a recording?”

“Here.”

Malcolm takes another bite of his pasta while she finds it on Travis’ PADD, wishing, not for the first time, that chef wasn’t so infatuated with cooking everything al dente.

“Thanks.”

She takes her earpiece from her pocket and presses play, frowning slightly. As she listens, it deepens, drawing a topographical map of concentration on her face.

“You should hear this.” She presses the earpiece into his hand.

The sound is not unlike other siren calls, a strange throbbing of noise created by gas giants’ magnetic fields. But this one rises and falls like waves against a beach, a tide of intensity that threatens to give over to total discord, but veers back into harmony before fully taking the plunge.

The longer he listens, the clearer it becomes that while there isn’t a pattern to how frequently the surges of noise occur, or how long they last, they build and fall at similar rates.

He hands the earpiece back. “The pattern is odd, what do you think is causing it?”

Travis and Hoshi share a look.

“My family never came across anything quite like it.” Travis tucks his PADD back beside his tray.

“I’m going to run a full analysis. We’ll find out what it is,” Hoshi says.

“What what is?” T’Pol asks, walking up to their table with a cup of tea. She is perfectly put together despite a few smudges of grease, but tired nonetheless. They all are.

“The field’s siren calls,” Travis answers.

They can’t keep calling it the field forever, but so far no one wants to name it, as if giving it a name means giving it permission to become the place they die.

“Since the field is unique, it is a fair assumption that its sound is, too.”

Hoshi gesticulates a wildly. “That’s what you’d think, right? But they’re almost identical, like something that’s repeating itself, that’s what’s so odd.”

“I will run some additional scans on the field. Maybe it will reveal something we did not previously see.”

“It won’t strain our systems?” Malcolm asks.

Travis shakes his head. “The auxiliary can handle it.”

“With any luck it might help get the engines back online,” Hoshi says.

Like the last piece of a puzzle slotting into place, these scans might reveal a solution. They could plot a vector out of the field. He looks out the window, at the purple sky framed with nooks and crannies of the build-up. To come all this way, just to get trapped here.

To come all this way just to fight a war.

T’Pol clears her throat. “How is Sim?”

There’s not much point in asking about the setbacks. They all know about the state of the engines, they feel the pervading gloom in engineering. No arrangement of equations has been solved for a future in which they are saved from a slow death.

“He recovered from surgery within a couple of hours. Phlox’s eyes almost bugged out of his head when he calculated his regenerative rate.”

Malcolm hadn’t known Sim had needed surgery, or that Trip had ever needed it either, before Hoshi had told him. He’s not heard much about his childhood that wasn’t a cheeky story or a passing answer to something Archer said, Lizzie being the obvious exception. He’s never questioned it. Why should he, when he hates thinking, let alone talking, about his own childhood?

“Sounds kind of like a superhero,” Travis laughs.

“Sim would like that, I’m sure,” Malcolm says. Especially if they are as similar as having a shared life of memories suggests.

“Commander Tucker had the same condition as a child?” T’Pol asks. “I understand it is not as common as it used to be.”

Malcolm lines his fork and spoon up on his plate, firmly pointing to three o’clock. “There used to be more cases of scoliosis until about a century ago.”

Travis frowns and Hoshi pauses, and Malcolm imagines them both mentally following the thread of history back through their minds. The foundation of Starfleet, First Contact with the Vulcans… but T’Pol is faster than either of them. “After Earth’s Third World War.”

“A lot of records were lost, then,” Hoshi offers.

Malcolm slides his plate away. “A lot of things changed, after the Eugenic Wars.”

History books would often point to the blip after the Third World War, before genetic manipulation was banned, as a period where Earth collectively shed its skin, breathing for the first time in decades. They had stared the threat of nuclear annihilation in the face and chosen a better way. Everything was changed, everything was better now.

The truth is closer to this: it took time, to enforce ceasefires; to uncover and shut down all the facilities being used to roll out the new, genetic age.

“…have improved, Phlox was saying people used to have metal screwed into their spine for the rest of their lives.” Hoshi takes another bite.

Malcolm had needed to have a fractured bone fixed as a child, a procedure his doctor had lectured would’ve needed screws, a second round of invasive surgery to remove them, and triple the time to heal in the not so distant past. He’d fractured his Tibia, clinging to rigging with his hands as the wind had howled, dizzy and swallowing his own bile while the storm cast the ship about like a leaf. At the time, Malcolm had just been grateful for a solid reason to refuse his father’s insistent demands he join him at sea.

“And now Sim is studying to become an engineer,” T’Pol says, in her unique way of offering a statement as a question.

“He says it’s _what he’s meant to do_.” Hoshi imitates his accent to a T.

“I always knew I’d be a pilot,” Travis smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Even if the world thought it had other plans for me.”

Like joining the Navy. Like donating brain tissue.

A lifetime of taking apart Phlox’s medical equipment, zooming around ship’s corridors with Porthos at his heels, being lulled to sleep by the quiet hum of power they’ve managed to restore—and still, the drive to fix what’s broken, to improve what’s not… but then, Sim is living two lives. His life on Earth, that he shares with Trip, and his life on _Enterprise._

He feels a stab of pain against his shin. It’s Hoshi. “I was going to go see if he’s still confined to Sickbay, see if he wants company while he waits. You want to come?”

Travis and T’Pol are leaving together, heads bent in discussion.

“Ah, I’m afraid I’m needed in Engineering.” There are conduits to fix, injectors to clean and rejig, plasma burns to patch, power to reroute, calculations—

“Have you spent any time with him?” Hoshi frowns, a Grand Canyon of concern compared to her earlier Fish River Canyon of concentration.

And belatedly, Malcolm realises that he hasn’t. For all his moral and personal proclamations, he’s been avoiding him.

“No,” Malcolm answers. Even if he can’t muster the strength to seek him out yet, he’s resolved not to run the next time he sees him.

“This way.” Archer’s voice rings out through the chaos in Engineering, overpowering the hissing and clanging. The thrum of it all has been drilling into his skull for hours, a ceaseless wearing down of his patience and concentration. The console he’s working on glitches again, blurring into wavy polygraph lines. He slaps at it with the heel of his hand, but it just beeps at him, unperturbed.

Tapping furiously, he resets it. He needs to recalibrate the third injector and—

“There’s Lieutenant Reed now.” Archer is louder, suddenly coming up behind him.

Malcolm’s finger stops in mid-air, the panel forgotten. There’s only one person on the ship who needs Malcolm to be pointed out to him. His heart thuds against his ribs in an averted missile launch.

“Lieutenant,” Archer greets.

“Captain.” Malcolm nods as he turns around, his locked down formality his saving grace.

“This is Sim.”

Bright eyes look at him from below a blond head of hair, above a tentative smile. He’s the spitting image of Trip, just a few years younger. A complete stranger.

“Hello, pleased to meet you,” Malcolm says, sticking his hand out in a gesture that matches the robotic quality of his words.

The hand reaching back is softer than he’s ever known Trip’s to be, and the grip, while sure, squeezes a little too hard.

“And you. Sir. I have some suggestions for modifications, Captain said you’re the person to talk to about them.”

Archer shoots Sim a reassuring smile.

Catching his wrist behind his back, Malcolm thinks how right it looks, Sim standing in front of the Warp 5 engine that dominates the room, even with half its guts spilled across the floor. The soft orange and purple light it casts is missing, its powerful thrum absent, as if the very heart of the ship has ceased beating. In a way, Malcolm supposes, it has. He can see Trip in his mind’s eye, absentmindedly patting the engine as he looks at the PADD in his other hand.

“Of course,” Malcolm answers, trying his best to smile. The eyes looking at him hold no hint of deeper recognition, no cheeky sparkle or tired trust. There had been no shared near-death experience in Shuttlepod One, no impolite insults volleyed across the net of differences between them, no late-night confessions, sitting squeezed together on his or Trip’s bunk. “Let’s go somewhere quieter to discuss it.”

Archer departs with private smile and a nod, leaving Malcolm to lead Sim past the lift towards one of the side rooms. The screens used to monitor the engine’s reactants are blank, casting the room in a purple light. Ironic, how he can’t escape the colour. The silver sheen of Sim’s jumpsuits gleams like he’s just stepped out of one of those science fiction films that Trip loves so much. That Sim loves so much.

Malcolm perches on the edge of one of the stools, digging his feet into the deck to steady himself.

“So,” Malcolm swallows, “What do you have in mind?” He shifts in his seat, knees almost knocking against Sim’s. His heart thuds furtively, surprising himself with his own reaction. He knows the roads fear takes through his body, the shudder and shake of the world in front of him as reality realigns itself.

With Trip, he’s comfortable enough to let their shoulders brush without recoiling, to feel secure in knowing that there’s no danger of reprimand or repercussion. It comes down to this: for all that Sim is Trip, Malcolm hasn’t met him yet, nor Sim him. He’s been remiss, hiding from him in guise of working on repairs until he feels ready to collapse.

Sim smiles hesitantly before beginning. “The damage to the injectors is almost repaired, it’ll do in a pinch. If we can ionise more of the plasma, we can try to get the nacelles running nice and hot.”

T’Pol had shared a similar conclusion at yesterday’s staff meeting, but her and Travis’ calculations ran into a dead end every time. The level of ionisation needed for impulse is just past the threshold where the field interferes; they can’t decrease the fields’ strength, and without an active flow of plasma, it impedes every attempt.

“We need to work out how to achieve a stable fusion reaction without the plasma field deteriorating. With the build-up on the hull, it’s only going to get more difficult.”

Sim wets his lips, “I’m thinking we can hook up additional Tesla coils, help keep the plasma ionised.”

Following the EPS conduits through the ship along his mental map, there’s plenty of room. “That’s not a bad idea.” He taps his index finger against his arm, trying to place the individual coils, but he can’t visualise it, not when the light is so purple and he’s so tired.

“We could add then on by the nacelles, and fiddle with the emitters there, too, strengthen the whole grid. I’ve ran some calculations. It looks possible, but it’d be one hell of a bumpy ride," Sim says, a small smile slowly unfurling across his face, handsome and hopeful. For a moment, he could swear he’s sitting opposite Trip. Malcolm’s ribs clench around his heart.

He takes the PADD Sim offers him, gripping it between his thumb and middle finger with well-practised ease. It’s still warm from where Sim has been holding it. He skims the calculations.

Shouldn’t Sim be talking to someone else about this? Archer had pointedly and personally directed Sim towards him, not Kelby or T’Pol, when either of them would surely be more suited to talking shop. In fact, the rest of the team had been eyeing him as he’d walked in, eager for their chance to interact with the bona fide clone in their midst.

Mal purses his lips. Maybe that’s exactly why.

“Too bumpy, perhaps,” Malcolm murmurs, calling up the exact figures and going over them a second time. Bending the book in dire situations is one thing, but Sim’s suggestion looks more likely to blow out the entire engine before building up enough momentum to escape. “Too risky.”

“Isn’t anything worth a try? We’ll die, otherwise.”

No point in calling it a risk if death is certain.

“See here?” He hands the PADD back to Sim, leaning forward and pointing at the peak in the graph with his middle finger. The ship can’t sustain the kind of burn Sim’s suggesting. “That’s sure to blow. I don’t think we could come back from that.”

They’d be dead sooner rather than later. And with the time left to them, later is less certain in its finality. There is still time to save themselves. The only difference between him and Sim, Malcolm realises, is that Sim’s clock seems so much faster to him.

“I looked up the ship’s safety margins…” Sim bites his lip, suddenly vulnerable in a way Malcolm has rarely seen Trip be. He is close enough that Malcolm can hear his breathing as if it is his own. “It should be alright.”

“What’s the saying: _specs ain’t the same as experience_?” He puts on his best impression of Trip’s accent. It’s a rather poor impression, but it does the trick. Sim lets out a startled giggle.

“If you say so,” he says, blushing slightly.

Malcolm leans back, and having nothing to do with his hands, he holds onto his arms, crossing them, anchoring himself. “I do,” he smiles. It’s good to see Sim relax in his presence.

“I have some experience, or rather, memories of building the engine for Starfleet. My—his—memories.” Sim looks down at his PADD. “I figure I should have remembered you by now, what with how Captain Archer says we’re good friends and all.”

His ribs clench again. “We, er, didn’t meet until _Enterprise. _Got off to a bit of a rocky start, to be honest.” They’d clashed, but not fatally, not out of opposing values, or because of a fundamental discordance between their characters. They just had different viewpoints, borne of conscience and similar priorities, but different all the same.

“If you shot down all my ideas, I can see why,” Sim laughs.

“More like you shot mine down.” He’d been the one too hot-headed to want to do things by the book, overwhelmed by just how underpowered and unprepared the ship had been for whatever aliens they might encounter out here in the dark. “Not without good reason, mind you.”

Sim drags his eyes up Malcolm’s frame, sizing him up, re-evaluating his crossed arms and neutral expression. Silence itches at the back of Malcolm’s neck. He fights against the instinct to shatter it, to stand up and break away. Maybe, what Sim needs, as well as a father and a Captain, is a friend.

“Bit of a hothead, are you?” Sim says warmly.

“Sometimes.” Agitated might be more accurate. Scared. Not the best words for someone everyone should be able to rely on to keep a cool head.

“Captain Archer said you’re the armoury officer. It seemed strange to me that I should talk to you about the engines.”

“I can get Commander T’Pol to go over your idea if you’d like a second opinion,” Malcolm says carefully. She, at least, he can trust not to treat Sim as an interesting oddity.

“Nah, I trust your judgment. You knew exactly where to look.” Another smile spreads across Sim’s face. “I think we work well together.”

Not comparing Sim and Trip is tricky, but in this moment, Malcolm knows he won’t be wondering if they are the same person again. Of course they aren’t, but as much as Sim and Trip are technically versions of each other, these ways of thinking do the man in front of him a profound disservice. They’ve seen far stranger things in the past few years. He can’t go back in time and make himself realise this earlier, make himself go and stand in front of the tank, but he is sitting across from Sim right now, and there’s no point in wasting the present.

“It’s nice, meeting someone like this,” Sim continues.

Malcolm raises his eyebrows: in the middle of a crisis, shooting his ideas down?

“You know, for the first time, without having memories of them or growing up with them there.” Sim shrinks into himself a bit. “Sorry if that’s strange, with my lifespan and all.”

“No, it makes sense,” Malcolm reassures. He remembers the rare moments of breaking out from the bubble of family life, when the person in front of him didn’t know he couldn’t sail and wouldn’t care either way; when he could act and think as his own person, the only image imposed on him being the one he had been taught to impose on himself.

He’s not that scared little boy anymore, sneaking away on a mission to confront himself, forcing himself to sit in a rowboat until he’s counted up to a thousand, hoping against reason that it will somehow make him fear water less. It’s not his first week, adrift among the stars, scared of any breach in his hull of composure.

“Won’t matter how long I live, if we don’t get out,” Sim sighs**.**

“We’ll get out,” Malcolm says softly, feeling like Sim has given him an unexpected gift. He carefully reaches to squeeze Sim’s elbow, gracefully sliding off his seat in the process.

“Thanks, Malcolm.”

Sim won’t have to feel alone anymore, and they aren’t going to die in some magnetic dead end of space, not if Malcolm can help it.

Spotting Sim’s blond hair in the mess hall, Malcolm makes a beeline for him, leftover pizza and a strong coffee balanced on his tray.

“Key lime pie?” The question jumps out.

Sim cranes his neck to offer him a smile. “Remembered it’s my favourite.”

Malcolm sits down opposite him, careful not to touch legs under the table. “These memories, do they just come to you?” Belatedly, he realises he’s skipped over any customary greeting, but Sim doesn’t look like he minds.

“The more time passes, the more I remember. It’s his life, but it feels like it’s happened to me.”

Malcolm tries his best to read between the lines. He can’t imagine what it must be like, not just dreaming up untrodden paths, but living a life in parallel, wondering if both are yours.

Sim takes another bite of his pie, sliding his fork through its layers with practised ease, curling his fingers to take a bite. Malcolm can see them holding a hyper spanner, a smudge of grease across his knuckles, veins visible just beneath the surface. He’s spotted him in Engineering, working on a console or conduit, expression tight with concentration, every inch of him exuding confidence.

Malcolm clears his throat. “His life?”

“I see Hess, I remember us roughhousing or sneaking a flask with us for training, but when she looks back, there’s a flash of recognition, and then nothing—because I’m not him.”

Malcolm wets his lips. “But all the same, you remember it. And what you’re dealing with… no one else knows what it’s like. You’re carrying double the weight on your shoulders.” It must be awful, like entering another dimension where suddenly you’re a stranger, everything familiar but nothing the same.

“It’s like I’ve lost all my friends.” He sounds morose, but catching Malcolm’s eye, he smiles shyly, “Except you.”

The effect is electric, a tingle down his spine and an automatic tugging at the corner of his lips. Why Sim is choosing to believe in him, for all their overtures of friendship, he can’t fathom. His directness is like an arrow, and now that he thinks about it, it’s strange that he could have ever imagined Sim expressing himself any differently. Genuine and to the point, almost poetic, charming to a T: it’s the Tucker way.

“I’m honoured,” Malcolm says. More than any medal pinned to his chest, he values the trust of his crewmates.

Sim lays his fork on his plate, clasping his hands together. “I feel like Frankenstein’s monster sometimes, a patchwork of Trip and Sim. Like the movie—you know?”

“I know Frankenstein. But you’re not a monster,” Malcolm frowns. At least no more monster than any other human being. Trip has always seemed less of a monster than most, brimming with compassion and kindness. He’s observed the same in Sim, watching him out of the corner of his eye in Engineering, perpetually ready to lend a helping hand, resolute and calm.

“No, I know, I just…” Sim gestures at his chest feebly, fingers clenching, but not grasping what he’s trying to say. “Made of the dying, not quite one thing or the other.”

Malcolm answers before he can think better of it. “You’re you.”

Sim chuckles, surprised. “I’m me.” It sounds like he’s trying the words on like a new outfit.

“Who is to say who any of us would be, if we had lived different lives? Or if we walked two roads instead of one?” Malcolm traces the rim of his mug with a fingertip. Steam breaks against his palm, threatening to make his hand slip when he takes a long drink.

Sim pulls a face. “Don’t know how you drink it black.”

“Don’t know how you can eat so much sugar.”

“Touché.” Sim toasts him with another bite of pie before it lands in his mouth, his cheeks hollowing around the fork.

Malcolm looks away, decides he should probably actually eat the cold pizza he’s loaded his plate up with. At least it has pineapple on it, his equivalent to Sim’s favoured pie. The first bite is absolutely delicious. He can’t help the small, contented noise that slips out.

A whole slice later, he looks up to find Sim looking at him, unreadable. He raises his eyebrows.

“Never understood putting pineapple on pizza neither.” He sounds strained.

“To each their own,” Malcolm smiles, and gulps down more coffee.

Sim stabs at his pie with his fork idly. “You know, I’m not the first human clone by a long shot.”

Malcolm swallows too soon, the large chunk of pizza slipping down his throat like a ping pong ball. “There were quite a few in the twenty first century. You’re the first to come from a Lyssarrian larva, though.”

“Guess that means I hold a world record,” Sim’s laugh sounds hollow. “These other clones, I looked through the historical database, but I can’t find out what happened to them. After, I mean.”

After the wars had ended and the messes left by the purges had been cleaned up, the brand-new world government had been faced with what to do with those who remained, but had no place in their shining new future. The clones, those genetically augmented, the superwomen and men, the new humans, the Khans, and those who had had nothing more than a single exon tinkered with. If they stuck around, who knew what kinds of ideas people would get?

“They were sent into exile to live out the rest of their lives in peace, but in solitude, prohibited from having children.” Malcolm pushes his tray to the end of the table, retrieving his cup to curl his hands around the warm metal.

It was why the Lunar colony had first been funded, expansion into space once again originating from a source of shame. First it had been to launch missiles, then to cover up a conspiracy theory worthy lie. At least the Warp 5 engine had been built for a better reason: to extend the hand of friendship to each and every alien.

Even the Xindi, whoever they turn out to be.

“Did they leave anything behind? Journals, art, reports…”

“If they did, I think it’s safe to say the government destroyed them.” Even today, no one writes about clones, except as some uncanny horror. The genetically augmented are cast as villains, and those interested in seeing them as human are of course compassionate, yet tragic figures, lacking in a much needed understanding of what is moral and best for humanity as a whole.

Sim looks glum as he drains his glass of water. “When I’m gone, who will remember me? My parents don’t even know I exist.”

“We will; the crew will.” _I will, _Malcolm doesn’t say.

“You’ll stop them from touching my diary?”

Malcolm balks. “You keep a diary?” It’s not uncommon, they’re pioneers, after all. Or is he messing with him—

“Sim.” A cool tone, unmistakably T’Pol’s, approaching from his six o’clock.

“Dr Phlox asked me to inform you that you are late for an appointment in sickbay.” Her voice doesn’t falter, but her eyes flick between them, uncertain. She hadn’t meant to interrupt.

“Thanks T’Pol,” then to Malcolm, “He’s been running extra tests on my brain, trying to work out why I have Trip’s memories, and why I seem to be missing some now.”

“It’s not genetic?” They had settled on the theory of DNA being transferred during embryogenesis, before the cells differentiated, technically making Sim part Lyssarian.

Sim shakes his head. “It’s to do with the polaric field. It’s so strong, it reflects the electro-magnetic patterns of Trip’s brain to mine.”

“And because you’ve been exposed to it your whole life…” The field could not change Sim’s brain’s physical structure, but if it could influence the field enough to simulate Trip’s memories, tricking it into constructing memories of things that had never happened to him. More than just shadows on the wall of a cave.

“The genetic structure of their brains was similar enough for the field to replicate a pattern,” T’Pol says.

“Like filling in the blanks of a mirror image,” Malcolm processes this new information. “But what about…”

Sim gets there before he does. “Phlox thinks that I’m not getting as many memories as before because my life on _Enterprise _has been so different.”

“A subtle yet not insignificant distinction,” T’Pol concurs.

“Well, best not to keep him waiting, I’ll be along in a minute,” Sim gestures at his pie, answering T’Pol’s nod with one of his own as she goes to join Hoshi a few tables over. They sit close to each other, but don’t touch, looking and longing, dancing down a tightrope of emotion.

Malcolm rests his cheek in his palm. “You’ve stopped getting new memories?”

“I still get bits and pieces.” Sim isn’t even pretending to eat the last few bites of his pie any more, “impressions or moments, but it’s like trying to grab hold of mist.”

“Do you miss them?”

“Sometimes. I am Trip, I feel like him, but it’s not all been the same. I think like this, it might hurt less.”

Malcolm presses his leg against Sim’s, shooting him what he hopes is a reassuring smile when he looks up, confused. He doesn’t move his leg, keeping it against Malcolm’s, a solid push of warmth.

He’s been a coward, avoiding Sim when he’d been young. He’s scared of seeing his own childhood. At fourteen, gangly and only starting to grow into his body, face a Jackson Pollock painting of puberty, he’d been allowed to hold an ancient Baker rifle. Hefted it onto his shoulder, bayonet attached, he had understood the power of a weapon as a tool. He did not care for war or imaginary enemies, but had thought instead of facing down his father with it.

As much as a gun can go a long way to keeping him safe, a word or a glance, or even a touch, can move the world just as much.

“Saving room for dessert?” Sim asks, sliding the last of his pie across the table. He doesn’t comment on the abandoned tray, doesn’t berate or look at him with pity.

“You don’t want to finish it?” Malcolm accepts the plate automatically.

“Nah.” Sim gets up, and the sudden cold against his leg is unwelcome.

Then, casually picking up Malcolm’s tray, he winks at him—quick as lighting and gone before Malcolm can do much more than blink in response.

At a bit of a loss, he tries the pie. It tastes of lime and all American sweetness, just like Sim would. 

Malcolm taps through the diagnostics, never skimming the figures. The phase cannons are as familiar as a second set of teeth, grown in painfully, finally worn down for size. They aren’t actively damaged by the ferric ions—battle ready, but without a target in sight, slowly being fossilised. Threatening yet useless.

One of his team checks the ship twice daily, but he always makes sure to do the rounds once a week. E Deck is last: he exchanges a few words with Phlox in sickbay, takes a moment to breathe in the clean scent of earth in the hydroponics bay, checks the airlock, the mess hall, the stores, Decon, the EV lockers...

The grooves of the ship are smooth under the tips of his fingers, weather-beaten since they’d left spacedock, daisy fresh and still wet behind the ears. It’s part of the ritual, touching each room hello and goodbye, a silent thank you for everything she does for them.

The shuttlebay is his last stop, fitting considering it’s the place they had all first stepped aboard, and someday, will leave for the last time. The idea that it will ever be over for them—knock on wood they don’t die first—is surreal to the point of absurdity. It’s a unique quality of the present, so all-encompassing it feels like forever. Every breath will be inevitably given away, every day ended, lives summed up and relegated to memory.

The door to one of the shuttlepods is open.

It’s Shuttlepod One, that harbinger of doom. He tenses. They’re stuck in the middle of a polaric field, the outer hull crusted shut like eyelashes upon waking, and still he tenses, high alert a habitual second skin. Better safe than sorry.

Creeping around so he can spy through the windshield, his steps are quieter than a ripple on a lake.

“Lieutenant, I know you’re there.” That familiar Southern twang.

He steps through the door. “What gave me away?”

“Nothing,” Sim smirks. “I saw you come in. Figured you’d be lurking.” He’s sprawled over the bench, emergency packs against the bulkhead as pillows to lean against, his body an inviting zig zag of bad posture. Malcolm sits opposite him.

“All we need is a fire,” he muses, grinning simply because it’s a very macabre thing to say.

Sim puts the PADD he’d been reading down, screen flat against the seat of the pilot’s chair. Scowls. “Once is more than enough for me.”

"You can say that again."

It’s not the same, with the silver of the hull staring back at them instead of the mire of eternity. There’s no immediate vertigo at the reminder of their helplessness, no vulnerable remark to bite back for fear of unravelling completely. Not like when he looks out of the window in the mess.

Sim smiles, tilting his head. "I'll be glad when this is over, too."

When Malcolm looks at him, he doesn’t see the magnetic build up on the hull, or the looming threat of a slow and miserable death. Despite the dire situation, the amusement on Sim’s face makes him want to smile.

“C’mon Malc, the floor can’t be all that comfortable.” Sim pats the bench beside him, arm curving to form a perfect Malcolm-shaped space for him to slip into. Trip had never called him Malc, not even Mal, or any of those southern endearments like _darlin’ _he longed to hear.

“Alright.”

Getting to his feet and sitting, there’s not enough room to leave a buffer between them, no time to brace himself for the pressure against his thigh. To suddenly be so close when he can’t remember the last time he touched another person purposefully, not crammed together on San Francisco’s public transport or jostled together mid emergency, is strangely liberating. He feels realer than he has in months, more tangible. He rests his back against the shuttle’s hull. At least Sim has pulled his arm back in, hands resting loosely on his lap.

“It feels safer being back here again.”

“In this old rustbucket? I can hardly see why.” Malcolm kicks his heel back against the bench, too light a punishment for the horrors it had put them through.

Sim shrugs. “We survived it, but I don’t know if we can make it out of this anomaly.”

It’s beginning to feel hopeless. Any attempt to restart the engines or work around the effects of the field invariably fail. The impossibility of it presses against the temples, a tension headache borne of his own inadequacy. He doesn't want to die. He doesn't want any of them to die.

“Guess I’m the grim reaper this time around,” Sim jokes, heart not in it.

Sad is an expression that Malcolm has come to know on Trip's, and now, Sim’s face. He’d glimpsed it before, but after Elizabeth died it had become a base coating, hard around his eyes by default, dragging his head towards the floor instead of tilted up to the stars.

"Hardly. Just this morning, I heard two of my team critiquing each other's eulogies."

"Well, guess I'm not alone in it then." The joke falls flat, if it even was a joke in the first place. Despair leaks into the air, making it heavy like summer heat.

Maybe it’s the press of Sim’s thigh or the frankly despondent line of his shoulders, but Malcolm ignores the frantic need to second guess every single interpersonal impulse he has, and, for once, trusts his intuition without hesitation or evaluation.

He reaches for Sim's hand and grabs it. "We'll make it."

A few moments pass, but then Sim twists his wrist, sliding their palms together and squeezing ever so slightly.

"I—" Sim swallows, hesitant. But he doesn’t pull away or awkwardly ease him off, there’s no embarrassed smile, no heart-breaking compassion for Malcolm’s feelings as he’s rejected. 

It occurs to him, as Sim weighs his words, that, as many possibilities as you think you may have, they aren't realised until you act. Dreams can sustain your survival past what you think your limit is, but to live you need realise your thoughts; reach out to others and take part in the world. 

A flicker of hope has been growing so quietly in his chest, its very existence is a surprise.

"I want to wake him up sometimes, just for a few minutes. I need him to tell me—I need to ask him so many things. No, just one thing. I can tell my memories apart, but my feelings..."

_About whom_, Malcolm wants to ask. He's wondered if Trip is interested in T’Pol. If there was ever anything more… complex than friendship between him and Archer. Every second that Sim doesn't move his hand away sends him spinning out a bit further, uncertainty a lake he is trying to traverse.

“He might not have the answers you want. But what you do about them is up to you." Even in the 22nd century, being human means being bound to malleable as well as unchanging realities, susceptible to unforeseeable coincidences, but nonetheless capable. "I believe we make our own luck."

"Yeah?" Sim's expression is open, vulnerable.

Looking at him is almost too much to bear. He is summer sunshine, he is warmth on the coldest day of the year. Malcolm wants. He wants…

Sim doesn't have another question, at least not one he asks with words. With no preamble, he leans forward and kisses Malcolm.

The position is awkward, almost cramped, but with Sim’s lips moving against his, open mouthed and eager, he couldn’t care less. Instinctual, Malcolm kisses him back, grabbing hold of whichever part of him is nearest with his free hand. Like being swept up in rapids, he follows the slant of Sim’s mouth, setting the pace, pressing himself closer, grabbing at his jaw so he can deepen the kiss, all teeth and spit and heat.

In a fever dream of motion, Sim curls his hands around his hips, tugs, and Malcolm is pushing off, scrambling, until he’s sat on firm, warm thighs. He kisses down Sim’s neck, light and fluttering, mouthing at his collar, slipping his tongue between cotton polyester blend and skin. He tastes sweat and engine grease.

Sim nudges the side of his head with his chin, prompting him to sit up again, the perfect height for another wet white-water kiss.

“Wow,” Sim breathes, hot across his mouth.

Malcolm laughs, hooking his forefingers together at the nape of Sim’s neck. They’re looped around each other like a figure of eight, an infinity of feeling between them.

“I mean—” Sim grins. “That was…”

“Incredible?” Dreams could keep him fed for a thousand years, but his belly would never be full, he would never feel as sated and safe as he did right now, the world sliding softly into place. And all they’d done was kiss.

“I, uh, not that I didn’t enjoy that—very much—but,” Sim bites his lip, “I’m only going to be around for nine, ten more days.”

It’s a wholly welcomed gift that Malcolm can run his hand through Sim’s hair, gel clumping it into hard spikes. “That could be true of anyone I meet.”

“I’ll grow old right before your eyes.”

Malcolm imagines dignified silver at his temples, crow’s feet deepening the intensity of his gaze. He’d still look unfairly attractive, Malcolm decides. More importantly, underneath it all, he’d still be Sim.

“I meant every bit of it.” He shifts a bit, grinding against the growing tent in Sim’s jumpsuit.

Sim tightens his grip. “But with me it’s a certainty, when I’ll die. I never thought—I don’t want to hurt you if we start something.”

And there’s really only one answer to that unspoken question. 

“I choose you all the same. All the hurt later, I choose it, too, because it means we can be together now.” Malcolm wets his lips. “If you’ll have me, of course.”

“If I’ll—yeah Malcolm, I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [LordAxxington](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordAxxington/pseuds/LordAxxington) and [ThirdRateDuelist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirdRateDuelist/pseuds/ThirdRateDuelist) for beta reading some scenes despite never having watched any of the show, and thanks to [clockenfrau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockenfrau/pseuds/clockenfrau) for discussing clone ethics with me.  



	2. Chapter 2

“They’re messages,” Hoshi beams, standing in front of a screen whose readout Malcolm can make neither head nor tail of. “All those strange siren calls, they’re double encrypted and in a variety of dialects, but they’re definitely messages!”

It’s another staff meeting lit by the nightmare sky, Phlox and the bridge crew gathered around the screens in the new conference room. Sim’s silver suit stands out among their Starfleet blues, reminding Malcolm of his strangeness, of their responsibility. Sim catches his eyes, and sends him a wide smirk, nonchalantly rubbing a spot just above his hip where Malcolm knows, beneath silver and regulation blue, there’s a string of love bites from the night before.

“Have you managed to translate them?” Archer asks, perking up. At times there’s little doubt as to why him and Porthos get on so well.

“Partly,” Hoshi says, not managing to wholly hide the constipated look that crosses her face. Malcolm has heard more than a handful of rants about the impossibly unrealistic expectations of instantaneous and accurate translations for hitherto unknown languages, even using the universal translator’s immense processing power to identify patterns.

“Is there anything to indicate who is sending them, or what they are saying?” T’Pol asks, her eyes betraying a gentleness that her tone doesn’t.

A few taps brings up a different display. “I think they’re from a very large number of people, some of them letters to keep up with family.” She skips a few screens: half untranslated text, half UT symbols. “But others are…”

The next screen has fewer translated words, mostly articles and pronouns, easy to spot in the early stages of deciphering a language’s grammar. But the proper nouns it has deciphered jump out at him:

A name attached to the coordinates of Earth, the chemical formula for kemocite, the isotope depicted visually alongside lines of text,_ NX-O1_ appearing in a postscript, and earlier on, one of the few translated words: _outrage/anger_.

“It’s hard to be sure. The fragments of other languages already in the UT’s database aren’t enough to act as a Rosetta stone to get the gist of it, but the syntax leads me to believe this isn’t a long winded endorsement of their plan to destroy Earth.”

“It’s a criticism?” Archer asks, guarded. Preemptively judging a person, let alone an entire group of people is a mistake that he can see in Archer’s face he regrets having ever made. 

“We think so, it appears to be the main topic of the letter.” Hoshi stands her ground. He’s proud of her, how she refuses to cede to feelings of inadequacy when expected to meet unrealistic expectations. She flags up some of the translated words amongst the star like symbols of the Xindi alphabet, but _outrage/anger_ remains as it is. Malcolm squints, the tag under it reads _Lorque__’eque_. He shudders at the memory; the phantom pain in his stomach and along his neck still haunts him in off moments. Travis had found a beacon on the planet, one of many, and almost completely drained of power. Archer had been relieved to destroy the virus and transmit the records back to Earth so that their memory could live on.

Hoshi continues, “Some of the phrases are borrowed from other languages or dialects, the code switching allowing for more precise translations, but we’re not yet sure of the nuance.”

Archer meets Malcolm’s gaze for a brief and overwhelming second, then says, “It’s entirely possible there is already a resistance to the group who wants to destroy Earth.”

Why wouldn’t there be? In whose interest is it really to build weapons instead of seeking common ground? War is the bread and butter of the powerful, another tool in an arsenal to divide and oppress and destroy. Maybe it’s a very human perspective—one of many, and isn’t that the crux of it—to seek to persevere, even when what you’re fighting is yourself. But if conflict becomes inevitable, the goal must be to end it quickly, with as little pain and loss on both sides, so that the underlying issue can be addressed peacefully. That’s where he comes in. 

Malcolm glances to the side to see T’Pol’s gaze already on him, searching for a look of understanding. She says, “A fair assumption, Captain.”

He is not the only one who has been grouping all the Xindi together, the complete lack of information about them leading to wilder and increasingly hateful stories being circulated amongst the crew, the likes of which he’d hoped belonged to a past they would spend the next minute boasting about how they had escaped. They would say, _what an immature people to give into hate and search for destruction_. They would say, _oh how they__’re going to pay for what they did to Earth_. They would laugh, and get back to sparring or polishing their weapons. And it wasn’t just the MACOs, he’s heard the talk in the mess hall, in the corridors, volleyed from one crew member to another as casually as scuttlebutt.

Hayes speaks up for the first time that morning. “So the Xindi we’re hunting, they’re terrorists.”

“It makes sense that every single Xindi isn’t acting together as one.” How could they? “Permission to prepare a brief on how I recommend we best proceed, Captain?”

The production of a planet killer weapon had to be intricate and far reaching, meaning a large enough economy or resource distribution of some sort, and consequently, a large number of people, not even considering that their alliance was comprised of separate species. Hell, they probably all had their own languages and alphabets, and again he finds himself in awe of Hoshi’s ability, of her poise when faced with well meaning but impatient superior officers.

“Yes, thank you, Lieutenant. I expect the same from you Major, have both reports ready for my review by the time we leave the field.” A hint of Archer’s causal optimism is back, seeping into the room like a half-remembered dream. It harks back to when their mission was one of peace and exploration. He wishes for a shipwide return of the surety and calm that acting in accordance with one’s beliefs affords. Looking at Sim he wishes they’d give him a spare _Enterprise _uniform, he wishes he could be there if—_when_ they set out on a mission of friendship again. 

“Yessir,” Hayes says, his voice taut as a trigger finger at the ready. Military discipline and rigour, a submission to authority insidious in its patronage of belief.

Malcolm’s own “Aye, Captain,” is drenched in relief.

Hoshi takes that as her cue, changing the picture on the screen again and saving him from having his tone hang in the air for too long. “We’ve also deciphered parts of what we think are U’tani secret service logs, er, this one is a Haradin trading advertisement, this one is Ikaaran, judging from the length probably a personal letter...” She trails off, catching Archer’s bemused expression.

This is where Trip would usually make a funny comment, lightening the mood and gracing them all with a smile on his beautiful face. But Trip’s not there, and while Sim is and isn’t him, he misses Trip, misses his friend. Sim’s not speaking up, and it makes him ponder the possibility of coincidence and nurture. Just how much do our memories define us?

Travis jumps on the momentary quiet instead. “The sheer number of messages makes us think this is a large communications hub, amplified by the field and allowing them to send messages across the Expanse. This boost might even be able to counteract the effects of some anomalies!”

“At this stage it’s still guesswork, Captain,” Hoshi cautions.

Archer smiles, a little sadly, but also proud, looking more like the man he remembers from _Enterprise_’s maiden voyage. “Excellent work, all of you. With all the challenges we face, a Captain could not wish for a finer or more dedicated crew.”

Malcolm’s heart feels both larger and too small at the same time. He admires Archer. It's been strange realising just how much as he’s struggled these past few months, and how Malcolm needs to put who he wants Archer to be aside to see him for who he is, to offer him help and friendship. It’s the least he can do for someone he respects and cares about, and it feels good to return the favour for the years of support. He’s not sure if Archer knows how much it means to him, the casual American way he hands out compliments and affirmations, a simple clap on the shoulder making Malcolm aware of how wide the gap within him tears, soothing it at the same time, helping him fill it with something new.

“Now, how are the repairs going?”

The air all but deflates out of the room, Archer’s hopeful countenance threatening to evaporate again.

“They won’t be completed for another week,” T’Pol says, not even looking at her PADD.

Archer sighs, leaning back again a console. “The crew is already pulling double and triple shifts. We need another solution.” In a week it won’t matter if the engines are fixed or not, the build up will have doomed them to a slow death no weapon or treaty can save them from.

“Commander, if the effect of the EM field were a bit weaker, could our engines handle it?” Sim asks.

T’Pol tilts her head. “Perhaps. The latest field coil tests show a five percent improvement, but it is insignificant in mitigating the effects of the EM field.”

“What if we could get rid of 80 percent of the build up?”

“How?” Archer interjects.

The corner of Sim’s mouth turns up as he looks at Malcolm instead of Archer. “We blow it up. It’s mostly composed of ferric ions, so if we initiate a thermite reaction…”

He can see where Sim is going immediately, oh the clever bastard: “We can synthesise iron and eliminate the majority of the build-up.” They’d feel the explosion more than they’d hear it, reverberating through the un-shattering ship, Occam’s razor to their predicament. It sends a throb through him, sudden and intense, desire running downstream and leaving him momentarily dizzy.

He bites his cheek, suddenly frustrated that he can’t fast forward to the end of the meeting, pull Sim away from the rest of them and crush himself against him. He wants to peel his jumpsuit off his shoulders, hold on tight and—Sim catches his eye for a brief moment, mouth parting in surprise at whatever it is he sees on Malcolm’s face.

“We would need the exactly corresponding amount of aluminium and oxygen,” T’Pol states in lieu of a question.

“I reckon we can get it from the ship—here,” Sim hands her his PADD, his fingers curling around its edges like they’d been curled around his waist the night before. “I’ve worked out where we can strip away enough aluminium, and the crew knows how to perform the process in a vacuum.”

It’s unprofessional, he chastises himself, and annoying—he _wants_ to be giving the plan to save the ship his full attention. But he’s only human; the fuse in his belly has been ignited, and he’s left with a mounting fizzle, propelling him ever closer towards Sim. It’s simple physics. 

“How safe is it? Thermite packs quite a punch if I remember correctly.” Archer sounds unsure, but he’s craning his neck to look at Sim’s PADD.

“The hull will hold,” Malcolm says, grateful that his voice doesn’t waver.

“You want to catalyse the reaction by polarising the hull plating?” T’Pol hands the PADD to Malcolm next. Breathing deep, he wills himself to focus on the diagrams and equations.

Sim hums in agreement. “And it’ll magnetise the iron so that the ship will repel rather than attract the build-up.”

“But it will not stop the other ferric ions.” T’Pol clicks away at her own PADD.

Malcolm scans the PADD, looking for anywhere he can poke a hole. No matter how brilliant or exciting, the idea has to work if they’re going to make it. So far it all falls within a comfortable enough safety margin, but the execution—

“With a lot of the ferric ions clustered together, how clean can the reaction be?” Malcolm asks.

“We could always focus on the larger clusters Ensign Sadir’s team identified,” Sim says. “Even if we only eliminate, say 70 percent, that could make all the difference.”

Malcolm wets his lips as he looks over Sim’s projections again, pointedly not looking at him, simmering. “This all depends on if we get the engines up to…”

“A 30 percent improvement.” T’Pol finishes for him, looking up from her PADD. Her eyes look regretful, sad.

Archer’s frown betrays the answer to his own question: “Can we manage it?”

“The idea is sound, but we won’t have enough time to get the engines functioning at the required capacity.”

Time. No matter which problem they try to solve, or how, it all comes down to time.

Sim steps closer to Malcolm, his open hand reminding Malcolm that he is still holding his PADD. He hands it back clumsily, dragging the pads of his fingers over Sim’s knuckles, a placeholder for all the things he wants to do once they’re dismissed. “Next time,” Malcolm murmurs so that only Sim will hear.

Sim replies by squeezing his bicep. Malcolm wishes he would keep his hand there.

“Alright, keep the ideas coming. Hoshi, Travis, Sim—excellent work, keep me updated on the progress. If there’s nothing else…”

There’s a murmur of _ayes_ and _yessirs_, too dejected to be up to formal Starfleet scratch, but protocol has become like a long lost mentor out here in the strange depths of the universe. 

“We’ll meet again tomorrow at 8 o’clock sharp.” Archer dismisses them with a tired smile, leaving the room.

T’Pol raises her eyebrows at him as she passes, but he thinks she’s inquisitive more than anything else. Hoshi musters a sad smile in her wake, but he can’t manage one in return, just a feeble nod. He isn’t interested in dissecting their chances with either one of them on the way to the turbolift, so he lingers, phantom fire dancing on his skin where Sim had touched him.

He pinches the bridge of his nose, willing the pressure to focus him. He hears rather than sees the rest of them leave. Then it’s only him and Sim, who’s standing close now, taking up his periphery, turning his world silver.

His voice is rich and deep. “I remembered you like explosions.” Malcolm wants to sink into it for hours.

“That, uh,” he swallows, “that I do.” He feels strong hands on his elbows, and lets his arms be pulled downwards, finally looking at him again, the sweet arc of his nose so close that if he stood on tip toe he could kiss it. So he does.

“You like the idea then?” Sim’s grinning at him, blissfully unaware of how tightly Malcolm’s insides are being wound, coiled and ready to spring at the slightest touch.

He groans. “Yes, yes. It’s ingenious and sexy.”

“Sexy?” Sim tugs at one of his zips, more a warning than a demand, and begins to lean in for a kiss.

“Oh no, you’re coming with me first,” Malcolm insists, catching Sim’s hand with his own and yanking him out of the room before he can seduce him with a lip lock. The conference room is one of the last places he wants to get up close and personal with his lover.

A small part of his mind is screaming at him, at the casual display of affection, at how this is their business and no one else’s so why is he dragging Sim through the very public corridors of the ship like they’re in some kind of romantic montage? But Sim’s breathless laugh is louder, shaking from his hand to his heart, warming him from the inside out.

Finally the door to his quarters slides closed behind them, and it’s just the two of them, breathing each other’s air.

“Now?” Sim asks, but the joke in his tone is gone, stripped away to leave an earnest eagerness in its wake.

“Let me take care of you.” He doesn’t expect the sentimentality that spills from him, he’s past thinking about just how fast he can get his hands on Sim and onto just how good he can make it for him. Oh, how he wants to make it good for him.

Sim lets Malcolm push him towards this bed, uncharacteristically compliant as Malcolm slowly pulls his jumpsuit off him, his hands tracing river after river along his body as he goes, imprinting millions of years of geography onto his skin.

“You know, and don’t take this the wrong way, I never thought you’d be so touchy,” Sim murmurs, shivering as Malcolm caresses a spot on his stomach.

Malcolm hums. “I’m just picky about who I let touch me. You,” he reaches for Sim’s hands, now freed from their silver sleeves, and holds them against his cheeks until Sim takes the cue, “are most definitely allowed.”

Sim pulls him in, kissing him like he does everything else: with relentless thoroughness. He kisses like wearing down a stone’s jagged edges, leaving only the smooth slide of their mouths against each other. Moving to his neck, Sim inches his collar open with one hand, and oh, it’s his left, he’s always wondered if he’s a bit ambidextrous—and then his mouth is on Malcolm’s neck.

Fighting past the onslaught of giddy pleasure**_, _**he realises Sim is being very careful about making sure he’s kissing below the line of his uniform, a scrape of teeth all the warning he gets before the familiar burst of pain-pleasure under his skin. “Been wanting to do that since last night,” Sim speaks the words alongside open mouthed kisses, ragged and wet and soothing against his skin. Malcolm had been called away as they’d cuddled, his codes needed for access to a sensitive area of the armoury for repairs.

“You drive me insane, you know. You look so good, standing so fucking prim and proper in your uniform,” a long lick up his neck, “out of it, too. I keep wanting to touch you somethin’ awful. You’re so precise, so strong,” and he’s babbling now, “know exactly what you’re doing, what you do to me, nothing without a purpose–” There’s another scrape of teeth against his collarbone, and he quakes with it. It’s like a revelation, being with someone who cares about who he is as naturally and generously as he does everything else. It feels so good, having Sim’s mouth on his neck and the heel of his palm pressing between his legs, but this isn’t quite what he has in mind.

Sim chases him as he leans back, but Malcolm slips off the bed, holds him at arm’s length, fixing him with a grin. “Thermite,” Malcolm says, but the rest of the sentence runs away from him, and really, the one word _is _explanation enough.

Getting Sim’s jumpsuit and briefs around his ankles takes a bit of manoeuvring, especially with how Sim is trying to divest him of his own clothing at the same time. Eventually he’s managed it, what is probably only a few minutes feeling like hours, and he reaches for one of his pillows to position under his knees. He hopes someone at Starfleet has the brains to approve carpets in future spaceship designs.

“What are you doing,” a hand cups his jaw again, tilting his face up, “darlin’?”

And if hearing that doesn’t kill him, then he’s not sure what will. 

Uniform pooled around his waist, fresh hickey on his neck, he looks up at Sim from where’s knelt between his legs. Bloody hell, he must paint quite the picture. “Thought I’d take in the scenery.”

“Down there?” Sim smiles, playing with the delicate cartilage of Malcolm’s ear, the rough press of his thumb sending insistent throb after throb to the core of him.

Malcolm is being sarcastic, but reflecting on it briefly, every single part of Sim is beautiful. “Excellent weather for it.”

Then he’s dipping his head, licking up the underside of his cock, one hand curling around the base. It’s been a while, a long time since it’s been anything other than quick and impersonal, and the first time it’s ever meant so much. He’s been in love before of course, but he’s never felt so sure in and of himself, never felt like part of a community, part of a family, like he does on board _Enterprise_. Being with someone takes on so many new dimensions, his world expanding in ways he hadn’t thought were possible.

Sim groans, pulling focus back, and Malcolm lets his cock slide further into his mouth, the heavy weight of it grounding him, surrounding him. He uses his free hand to guide Sim’s fingers up to his head because really, he’s putting himself in such a vulnerable position willingly, he can take a bit of hair pulling. He likes it, feeling all the minutiae of how he’s turning Sim on, how good it is for him, how good they are together.

“Fuck, Malc, you’re—” he breaks off into a moan as Malcolm does something complicated with his tongue. It takes another minute for Malcolm to feel ready to try taking more of him, but he goes slowly, rubbing a circle into Sim’s thigh to help him concentrate. The whimper Sim lets out as he goes as deep as he can feels like getting a 100 percent hit rate in a training exercise.

The hand in his hair tightens, and Malcolm’s grateful that his weight is on Sim’s thighs, both hands working to keep him still as he bobs his head. It’s just the two of them, dancing around each other in unspoken patterns, magnetic fields of their own in harmony, drawing each other in, moving in tandem, in sync, ever closer, “I’m gonna—soon—” Sim pants, tugs at Malcolm’s hair to get him to let him go. But he doesn’t want to, he wants to feel it all.

He swallows around Sim’s length, urging him on. It doesn’t take long. Sim shudders underneath him, letting out a cry that’s more breathless than there, spilling bitter and uncomfortable. There’s something uniquely satisfying about holding Sim in his mouth until he softens, cheek against his thigh.

Another tug at his hair and he pulls off, settling against Sim’s thigh again, stretching his legs out under the bed. He slips a now unoccupied hand beneath the waistband of his briefs, small, tight circles getting him close to the edge in seconds.

“Malcolm that was incre—wait are you—” and there’s a spark of recognition in his eyes as Sim realises that he’s getting himself off, his free hand reaching for Malcolm’s, twining their fingers together and squeezing. It’s the desire etched into his face, into every line of his body, that pushes Malcolm over the edge, has him pressing his face more fully into Sim’s warm and slightly hairy thigh as he holds himself through the aftershocks.

“That was incredible,” Sim says, finishing his previous thought. Malcolm hums in agreement, pressing a kiss against his thigh.

Wrung out, Sim drags him up onto the bed, helps him with his boots and sticky briefs. Their tangle of uniforms can wait for tomorrow, Malcolm decides, and untucks his duvet and cocoons them in it. Sim’s arm slings over his waist automatically, like South finds its North, like hope leads you home. 

Later, he and Sim are curled up under the duvet together, Sim resting his head on Malcolm's stomach as he lazily works on his PADD. Malcolm is still half asleep, half curled around Sim, absentmindedly carding his fingers through his hair every now and then. Glancing at the clock, there’s still time before the morning briefing.

“What are you working on?” Malcolm asks, tracing one of his eyebrows with his thumb. He knows there is probably an equation to accurately describe its trajectory, a vector of handsomeness, just like Gauss’ law could describe how close they are, magnetic poles drawn towards each other, lives at an intersection of orbits.

“My diary,” Sim drawls, voice croaky with sleep. “Was a little busy last night.”

“Really,” Malcolm says, amused. Sim had taken his time, paying attention to places on his body Malcolm hadn’t realised could feel that way, hadn’t thought ever could feel that way, so cared for and worshipped, like he was precious and irreplaceable.

Sim wiggles about under the duvet until he’s facing him. “Actually, there is something I want to talk to you about.”

His eyes and face are awake in a way in his body isn’t, his drawl lazy and relaxed, but there’s an alertness to him. He doesn’t sleep much; maybe it’s his physiology, maybe it’s the weight of losing Elizabeth. Maybe it’s that he has so little time.

Mal reaches for Sim’s hair again. “Oh yeah?”

“I, uh, I’ve been looking into my heritage,” Sim starts, pushing back into Malcolm’s hand like a cat.

“The Tucker family?” Or does he mean Phlox’s family? From the stories he tells, he has three wives and three husbands, a whole number of children, and then there’s his parents, too, and—

“My Lyssarian heritage,” Sim clarifies.

Malcolm levers himself up on one elbow. “Okay,” he says, to show that he’s listening, that he’s following.

“The Velandran Circle, a group of Lyssarian scientists who researched simbiots—they were working on an enzyme to counteract their short lifespan.”

It takes him a few seconds to process. Does that mean…

“You mean they could live longer?” That Sim could live longer?

Sim nods, the corners of his eyes wrinkling with a smile. “A normal Lysarrian lifespan. Or rather, a normal human lifespan for me.”

For a second it feels like his lungs are full of water, on the knife’s edge of drowning. But he sucks in air, clear and sweet, flooding his body with relief. Sim doesn’t necessarily have to die. He grasps at understanding the details: “I thought simbiots—no offence—were illegal?” He’d have been illegal, too, in another time and place, for more than one reason.

“Illegal, yes. But laws aren’t founded in morality.” Sim splays his hand over the skin where Malcolm’s heart is, and there’s layers of flesh and sinew and bone, but it’s like he’s reaching towards the very core of him. “They leave little space for human beings.”

Malcolm nods in agreement, words escaping him. Some laws are better than they had been in the past, others still paradoxical in their function for discrimination without ever naming their prejudice. He’d had no trouble changing his name, but he hates undressing in front of others. He has a long list of girls from his past to whip out at a moment’s notice, but would suddenly rather give up a ruse he’s spent years establishing just to hold Sim’s hand more often. He still doesn’t quite know how to act when social minutiae elude him. They by no means live in a utopia; not everyone agrees on what is to be considered progressive to accept and what is to be defined as intellectual to reject, the need to classify and contain everything persisting. 

Gentle pressure from Sim’s hand draws him out of his thoughts.

“I might get to stay.”

The average human lifespan is back up to 90; they’d have years and years to spend together. Malcolm pushes the details and complications away. His proneness to over-thinking is an enemy he’s learned to evade, even if he doesn’t win as many battles as he’d like. He focuses on the hand on his chest and lets joy trickle through him.

It’s awkward, craning his neck so he can lean down to plant a spontaneous, wet kiss against Sim’s forehead. “That would be wonderful.” Malcolm’s hands hold his shoulder a bit tighter, as if he could drag him through the days with him, pull him across to into his own river of time and ride the slipstream together.

“That would be so wonderful,” he repeats, tracing the thin skin by Sim's eye. He'll be seeing him with wrinkles anyway, but just maybe it'll be years into the future instead of days.

"There are so many things I want to do," Sim whispers, more to himself than anything else.

Malcolm smiles, "And you will." They'll get out of the field, they'll find a way to the Xindi, find out what the messages mean. And if they're lucky they'll get to go home, Sim will get to—

"It's not a certainty," Sim bites his lip. "Don't get too invested."

Malcolm runs a hand down his cheek. "It's a little late for that." His heart has been realigned, pointing towards Sim with Lorentz surety. While there would be hoops to jump through, bureaucratic nightmares to undergo, all sorts of uncertainties to be traversed, they would make it. They would get to stand in the warmth of sun, feel the kiss of the sea breeze, and dig their heels into the soft soil of the planet they are inexplicably connected to.

"Feeling's mutual." A kiss against his palm.

The weight of it hangs between them, the knowledge that they've both fallen into orbit around each other. Two lives opening up and intermixing in a network of ionic bonds; in a hand reaching out in the dark, trusting that it will find another to grasp and hold.

“Is there a record of how they lived?” Malcolm asks. He’s trying to think it through, carefully this time, without slipping too deep into a spiral of thought. His mind fills with images of luminescent tanks in dark rooms, twisting bodies and disillusioned morals—really, it could have been transposed directly from a science fiction film.

Sim shows him the screen of his PADD. It looks like a large family home on the outskirts of a shining city. The scientists must have lived there in a co-op, with the simbiot among them. Temporarily perhaps, ideally for the rest of their lives.

“At least they didn’t keep them in cages,” Mal huffs, and bites his lip at the words. Sure, Sim has roam of the ship, but nowhere further. Was never necessarily supposed to have a chance at further.

Sim presses a button. "Their manifesto survived, but it was more of an accident than anything else. They vowed to tell the simbiots the truth from the start, and let them choose their own path when they reached Lysarrian adulthood, like any other child. Even if it meant exposing their experiment."

While not a sound strategy from a security standpoint, he's buoyed by their integrity. To take staunch and unremitting responsibility for your actions is rare. Of course there are unforeseen consequences, but that to him sounds like an apt definition of life. There is no predicting or calculating a certain outcome, there is always an element of chance or risk. Intentions matter, but so does what you do when they aren't realised.

"Is that how they were found out?" Malcolm asks.

Sim shakes his head, smiling again. "No. Most left, judging from the fragmented records. But one who stayed ensured that this survived."

Placing the PADD on the floor beside the bed, Sim crawls fully on top of him, uncaring as half the duvet slips off the bed. Sim stares up at him over the dip of his rib cage. "She ensured that at least a part of their legacy survived and we don't even know her name."

“She looked beyond her moment in time, and saved what she could for us. For you.” Malcolm thinks about his next words carefully. "Have you thought about telling Doctor Phlox or Captain Archer about this?" Knowing about a theoretical enzyme is one thing, whether it works or if Doctor Phlox can synthesise it is another.

"That would be the next step, wouldn't it?"

“To conclude, though the effort to rid the hull of the build-up has successfully eliminated chunks, the energy used to recharge the EV suits and the phase pistol power cells would better serve in the attempt to get the engines back online.” Ensign Sadir’s voice is steady yet grave as she faces down the conference room. No one enjoys being the bearer of bad news.

They would have enough power to keep life support going for a few days, and food to last, but as soon as the air recycling shut down that would be it for them. They’d have the choice to hook power cells from all over the ship into the systems—that might buy them a few hours—but it’d also mean they’d die in the dark, without any torches to comfort them. Malcolm feels a clench of nausea in his stomach at the thought. Dying alone, dying in the dark, dying unremarked and unsuccessful…

"Just how far could we cannibalise parts to give the engines an extra push?" Archer asks.

Nadia shares a look with Travis, who answers, "Not too far if we want to fly the ship once we're out."

"It's both the advantage and the disadvantage of the EPS grid," Nadia explains. "It allows for near instantaneous power around the ship, generated as we travel instead of needing to be separately maintained and fuelled, but to get it to focus on the engines we'd need to essentially cut off the rest of the ship. As soon as we leave, all the extra energy would have nowhere to go."

Travis mimes an explosion with his hands and makes a _kaboom_ noise.

Archer tries to hide the sigh in his voice unsuccessfully. "Well, we're going to need another plan then."

Malcolm supposes that T'Pol probably knows the exact number of plans that have already been rejected. He doesn't envy her.

Just then, Hoshi bursts into the conference room. "Captain, you've got to see this!"

"On screen."

Nadia and Travis make way, loose strands of Hoshi's ponytail flapping around her face as she hurries. "It's the Andorians. It's that one who likes you, what's his na—"

"Shran? You've intercepted a message from Commander Shran?"

Hoshi nods, punching the buttons with expert speed.

"What are the Andorians doing in the Expanse?" Malcolm murmurs to himself.

Sim nudges him with his elbow. "Maybe Shran has another _debt _he needs to repay."

"There always is with him," Malcolm replies. The playful curve of Sim's smile has him suppressing one of his own. "He does seem very dedicated in pursuing the Captain, doesn't he?"

He catches the tail-end of one of T’Pol’s famous eyebrow raises, but her eyes are soft instead of severe: she’s amused.

“Here,” Hoshi smiles triumphantly. The fully translated communique is up on the screen.

It seems to get a tad personal, so Malcolm averts his eyes politely. Of course he just ends up looking at Sim’s hands, the grooves of his knuckles that dip gracefully between the peaks of his tendons, the pad of his thumb he knows is slightly rough on one side with callouses. His own are coarse in different places, rigging rope burn tugs that still run parallel to his knuckles across his palms, one on his middle finger from having to learn to write with a fountain pen, the first joint of his index finger from learning to fight with a knife, some along his thumb and fingers from all those guns at the academy—

“Hey,” Sim nudges him, bringing him back to the present again. Like wiping condensation off glass, the world suddenly less blurry, more real. Sim winks at him, familiar and friendly, nothing more to it than_ hello, I see you, you alright_?

He presses a palm against Sim’s side briefly in thanks. Just a few days ago he would have made sure that it was where no one could see, but now he revels at how little he cares who knows. Hell, he wants them to see, wants them to know how lucky he is. Wants them to know that they have chosen each other.

No one else has ever been so attuned to him to notice when he washes up on the shores of memory, unwelcome flashes that tug at his feet and drag him into the depths with every sweep of the current. It’s a bit of a shock to realise he wants to tell Sim about it, to purposefully row out to the shipwreck of his childhood and share what comes to mind. To tell someone who matters, to let them know what happened, and trust that it won’t change things.

“Alright Hoshi, that sounds like the best course of action,” Archer says, the screen blank again.

Malcolm casts a glance at Sim guiltily.

Leaning closer than he needs to, Sim’s breath is hot against the shell of his ear as he whispers, “Archer’s going to try reaching out to them. Figures since they’re close we might stand a chance despite not really understanding the field yet.”

Even their subspace SOS was degraded too badly to be received by the time it reached the edge of the field. Whoever built the spheres to change the physical laws of space was capable of a technological manipulation far advanced beyond anything humans or Vulcans have ever previously encountered. If the Xindi were capable of such feats of engineering, they wouldn’t need to build a planet killer.

“I will continue to analyse the field,” T’Pol says, replying to Archer. “Perhaps you could ask Commander Shran for more information about it as well.”

“Good idea. Now, where were we?”

“A plan to escape,” Nadia pipes up. “We can’t separate the engine from the ship, and the extra boost from all other energy sources on board isn’t enough.”

“Wait, all energy sources?” Sim asks. “Don’t we have two perfectly good engines…”

“…sitting in the launchbay!” Nadia finishes.

Sim spins towards him, a smile shining bright. “Malc, could we use the phase cannons to blast open the hangar doors?”

“I…” he hears the blood rush through his ears for a moment. “Yes, it’s possible.”

“With a couple of grappler cables we’ve got ourselves a tow job!”

There’s a moment of complete silence before the room breaks out in a hubbub.

“Those engines aren’t nearly strong enough!” Travis exclaims.

“For that to work we’d need to…” Nadia muses, trailing off with with a thoughtful look on her face.

“Could that actually work?” Archer asks T’Pol.

Malcolm should be feeling happy and relieved, but it sounds too good to be true. Hadn’t someone else suggested they use the shuttlepod engines a few days ago? He does his best to ignore them, thinking it through in his own head, rough sums and calculations swimming through his mind in wonky lines. “The initial thrust won’t be enough to give us the momentum we need.”

“No, not unless we induce a sustained fusion overburn,” Sims says. Despite the commotion, he still only has eyes for Malcolm. “We can use the magnetic force from the field to keep the plasma contained.”

Nadia clicks her fingers. “Yes, yes that could work. Travis, would you help me with the calculations?” Not only are she and T’Pol best versed on the field, but most of their disciplines have overlapped at one point or another. Especially in such tight knit working conditions.

“Already ahead of you,” Travis waves a PADD he’s materialised out of thin air.

Nadia laughs. “Commander, we’ll send you our calculations.”

“That would be most efficient,” T’Pol nods.

“Fantastic!” Archer pumps a fist into the air as if this is one of those water pole sport games—was it water polo? “We’re going to make it out alive!”

“Lieutenant Reed, if you and the rest of your team could prepare the phase cannons,” T’Pol says, waiting for a nod of agreement before addressing everyone else in the room in turn. Once she’s done, Archer dismisses the room with a grin, the sweeping arc of his arm reaching wide as if to embrace the future they could now travel to.

Malcolm catches a whiff of aftershave on Sim as he passes, a primarily woody scent. With how often the ship shakes and shudders, glass bottles are often one of the first things to break. The store carries a pleasant, yet limited range of replacements. This one smells like the one with the purple label, a heady crush of cedar wood and sea salt. It smells different on him than on anyone else.

Hoshi grabs his attention as she passes, mouthing, _Malc?_

_Later, _he mouths back, a tiny burst of joy exploding in chest. He’s happy. It buzzes under his skin, tiny bursts of energy heating his blood to plasma at a moment’s notice.

The ground feels lighter as he walks towards where Sim is waiting for Archer to finish signing something on T’Pol’s PADD. On his way, Malcolm automatically swings his arms up to reciprocate the high fives Travis and Nadia offer him. Choosing to work together and to not give up is no guarantee of success, but mutuality is itself a purpose. To share the joy of their success, to know some of the breadth and depth of meaning that this has for the people he is lucky enough to call friends—it’s in the oddest of moments that it hits him, that this is what it means to not be alone.

“Cap’n, there was something else I wanted to talk to you about,” Sim says, taking his chance to approach Archer.

“Go ahead.” Archer is as congenial as he would be with any ensign.

“It’s a conversation best had in sickbay with you, Malcolm and Doctor Phlox.”

“What kind of… conversation?”

Archer’s uncertainty sets him on edge. He brushes his arm against Sim’s, ready to stand with him against anything.

“It’s about my Lyssarian heritage. I think there might be a way for me to have a longer lifespan.”

Emotion washes over Archer’s face, surprise, guilt and then caution. “That would be great. I just need to inform the crew that we might be out of the field soon.” He turns away.

“Hope expands the world,” Malcolm says to Sim, taking his hand in his own. His world has never felt more wide or saturated with possibility.

“So, I heard we might be getting out of here soon?” Phlox asks in lieu of a greeting. He’s elbow deep in one of his cages, a strange chittering sound that Malcolm definitely does not want to know more about emanating from the dense foliage.

“How’d you know that? We only just came up with the idea,” Sim says, astonished. With a squeeze he lets go of Malcolm’s hand. Phlox doesn’t have to ask for Sim to hand him a cylinder Malcolm assumes has food or something else the creature needs in it.

“Ah, news travels fast in a closed system,” Phlox laughs, and pulls his arms out. Sim closes the lid as Phlox snaps his gloves off. “Heard it was your idea, son.”

Sim ducks his head. “Yeah. Though I’d never have had it without everyone else talking about everything.”

“Ah, aren’t all ideas like that, though? I’m proud of you,” Phlox says, waiting until Sim looks at him to smile his too-wide smile. Then he picks the cage up and busies himself with putting it back on the shelf, and sorts the other various paraphernalia he’s been using to where they need to be.

Malcolm can’t help but feel like he’s intruding. Surely this kind of moment is something personal.

“If it works,” Sim continues, “we should be out in just a couple of days.”

“That’s excellent!”

Malcolm’s father had never spoken to him in such a fashion, value being placed on distance and an attitude of superiority. To his father, dignity was paramount, but the corresponding respect was only earned as he deemed fit. He was the exemplary navy office, stout of heart and solid as rock in the hour of danger, so the stories went, but nothing Malcolm had ever done had ever been enough for him. Screw that old bastard.

“We’re not out yet,” Sim warns, but he’s smiling. They’d both abandoned caution miles ago, and if Phlox’s matching grin is anything to go by, they’re all jumping into the deep end of reckless hope.

“Not yet,” Phlox agrees. It’s only a matter of time before they save themselves. “Well, I’m glad you’ve finally brought your man home to meet your parents, I understand this is an important human ritual.”

Dizziness hits Malcolm, immediate and unexpected. When they said that being a Starfleet officer meant confronting the strange and unpredictable on a daily basis, they really had meant everything he could possibly imagine and then some. He has the urge to go and splash cold water on his face and remind himself that this is reality, but in the best possible way. Recovering enough to speak, he responds: “But we’ve known each other for years, Doctor.”

“Uh,” Sim splutters.

Oblivious to the absurdity of the situation, or perhaps secretly revelling in it, Phlox continues as if his position is the most natural one in the world. “Yes, but not as Sim’s significant other.”

Hell, the way he says it makes it sound as if they’re engaged.

“Dad, you don’t have to—” Sim starts, but a hand gesture from Phlox silences him.

“I take all my fatherly duties seriously. I have made an effort to be acquainted with all my children’s spouses.” Phlox shuts the last draw, and finally stops moving when he sits on his favourite stool by the monitors.

“I promise you don’t have to ask me about my _intentions,__” _and for a moment Malcolm fears he’ll choke on the word. “I won’t be offended in the slightest if we skip that part of… the ritual.”

Sim snorts with laughter.

“Good, good. I wasn’t going to say, but it does seem like a bit of very human nonsense to me,” Phlox sniffs.

Malcolm can’t help but agree.

The all familiar whistle signalling a ship wide announcement rings out and Archer’s slightly tinny voice greets them from the speaker next to the entrance to sickbay. “This is Captain Archer. During this morning’s briefing we developed a plan that may well get us out of the field. Nothing is certain yet, but it opens up the possibility of escape. Thank you all for you tremendous effort in repairing the ship and helping us complete the mission.”

There’s a brief pause, a yip that sounds like Porthos in the background.

“As Lieutenant Sato’s team translates the messages from the field that we’re picking up, they will be available for viewing by all crew members in the aft observation room.” Hoshi had gotten promoted? He’s glad that it has finally happened. He makes a note to dig into his stash of goodies from Earth to find something to give to her in celebration.

“Updates on the plan to escape will follow this evening.” Another whistle marks the end of the announcement. Travis’ idea to expand the ship wide announcement system for use outside of tactical emergencies has proven itself to be really useful.

“Ah, I must go take a look later,” Phlox says quietly to himself. With a flapping hand he motions for them to sit.

Malcolm sits on the bed closest to Phlox, swinging his legs a few times before forcing them to stop. Sim’s warm thigh against his own helps. The hand around his waist is a pleasant surprise, its presence helping unwind the steel in his stomach a little, grounding him like an anchor.

“You alright?” Malcolm ask, softly, so that only Sim can hear.

A squeeze at his waist. “Yeah. There’s no way to know if we have a chance until we try.”

Choices only exist in possibilities until they are acted upon, myriad daydreams and what-ifs, contingencies and fears overpowering the capacity to act. It is in acting that possibility unfolds, that you are actually taking a chance. Life, in other terms, is just an equation of risk.

The doors swish open to let Captain Archer step through. His collar is unbuttoned, his expression tired but alert.

“Dr. Phlox,” he greets, giving both him and Sim a tired nod.

“Captain,” Malcolm mumbles, unsure where the line of formality falls in this conversation.

Archer does a table take, and with his next statement throws said line out the porthole.

“Are… you two…” he fumbles for words. “Are you two seeing each other?”

Malcolm frowns. Had Trip never told Archer that he was also attracted to guys? Or was it more complicated than the split-second assumptions he’s making? Not that it’s really his business anyway.

“Yeah,” Sim says, tone defensive.

Malcolm clears his throat. “We aren’t in violation of any of the fraternisation guidelines.”

“No, no, of course you aren’t.”

Phlox picks Archer’s pause as the perfect moment to intervene. “Now that the Captain is here, what did you want to talk about?”

Malcolm feels grateful to Phlox in an entirely new way, not just for his underlying caring manner and being a fantastic father to Sim. He’s only prolonging the time until Archer grills them about it, of course. Nevermind that it’s none of _his_ bloody business.

Sim takes a breath. “Um, have you ever heard of the Velandran Circle?”

Archer shakes his head, but Phlox’s expression shifts and squirms. He says, “I came across a mention of them. They petitioned against the ban on creating simbiots many times before eventually disappearing from all historical record about, hm, seventy or eighty years ago.”

Just long enough to be older than living memory, not that they wouldn’t have been easily erased or forgotten about anytime before then. But with no one left for those few who were interested in an unrecorded history to find, the chances of any kind of testimony were slim to none. All that remained was what had been saved by the unnamed Lyssarian woman, the last known Lyssarian simbiot to have existed. Until Sim.

Phlox continues, “They were a group of Lyssarian scientists who were trying to develop a way to slow the simbiot’s rapid ageing. But their experiments were highly illegal and mostly fruitless.”

“I found a record of their experiments,” Sim explains, holding out the PADD to Phlox. “They found an enzyme that worked.”

For which the government tried to raze any trace of them to the ground. What had they been scared of? The creation of simbiots was illegal. Was it a moral opposition to the process, that there should only be one version of the ‘same’ person? Or was it intended as a safety measure against exploitation, to stop the breeding of a disposable class of labourers with a high turnover rate? They knew practically nothing of the world, not even Phlox, who had acquired the larvae at a trading hub some time last year. Lyssaria, a whole planet and people and culture summed up in a word they have sparse meaningful understanding of.

“With this enzyme, Sim could have a human lifespan?” Archer asks.

Phlox nods. “Theoretically. The information is meagre at beast, and there is of course the question of his human DNA.”

Malcolm can feel Sim tense beside him, turning still as ice.

“Scroll right to the end. There’s a genetic code, it’s intact.”

DNA that would be translated and transcribed, amino acids joined together in a chain that bends into shape, forming a protein, an enzyme, a way to free Sim from the predicaments they had borne him into. More time would give him the same chance as all of them on this mission.

“Oh this is wonderful!” Phlox exclaims. “I have to input this straight away, get started on seeing if we can synthesise this on board…”

Phlox hurries over to a machine, brushing past Archer without so much of a look. Mumbling to himself, he connects the PADD with a cable, and starts to push a sequence of buttons. He’s always admired that about Phlox, his readiness to act when he’s convinced of his ethical position, even if Malcolm hasn’t always agreed with his choices. The metal box he’s tapping the sequence of bases into is no larger than a fishbowl. How odd, that such a small thing as a single protein can have such tremendous consequences.

“Will it affect his brain?” Archer frowns.

“He can take it after the operation,” Phlox says, waving a free hand as he keeps his attention on the screen.

Malcolm bristles. Talking about Sim as if he isn’t here, assuming his decisions for him. “Aren’t you forgetting someone?”

Archer turns to Sim. “I thought we’d agreed.”

“So you’re saying I’m not allowed to change my mind?” Sim asks, hurt bleeding into his words.

“There won’t be any risk to you!”

Malcolm leans into Sim a bit, as if buffered by a sea breeze, reaffirming the solidity of their bodies and lives. Reminding Sim that he’s real and important. Malcolm knows him, knows he’s not the type of person to know he’s the only one who can help and ignore it.

“I will of course respect any decision you make,” Archer amends.

“Yes I’ll do it! Of course I’ll do it.” But its clear from his tone that he resents Archer’s doubt and attempt to speak for him.

“Mister Tucker will suffer no ill effects from his taking the enzyme afterwards, Captain.”

Archer rubs his hands together, a tell that he rarely lets show on the bridge. “How did you find out about this enzyme? Phlox said there was no way around the lifespan.”

“That I knew of,” Phlox mutters.

“I doubt many Lyssarians know,” Malcolm says, the words diplomatic, but voiced with a bitter edge. It is the same story repeated across the stars, part obfuscation, part wilful ignorance. You know and you don’t. Maybe there are too many places to look, or you are too busy looking inside yourself, but there is pain that goes unrecognised, words not yet found, a dignity denied. How long must one look away until it is itself a violence?

Archer gives him a questioning look. “How is that relevant?”

During the purges, everyone suffered. The world was not affected equally, but so badly that there was no escape. No one wanted to return to the old ways of violence and suffering, no one claimed the prejudices of the past, but they still built ships to ferry people to the moon. They had to be faster and reusable, there were so many people to humanely exile. From there it was only a jump to fitting the design with a warp drive. All the systems needed for sustained space flight were already there on the moon, the air filtration and renewal, the techniques to preserve food, newer and more compact ways to store energy. The path to their new age of peace of prosperity built on needless suffering, willfully inflicted, an old story told anew.

“Sim,” Archer continues, reigning himself back to the supposed neutrality of his authoritative Captain’s voice. “You’re welcome to stay with us, of course.”

Their voyage into space is a new chapter, another chance to try to rewrite that old human ouroboros. They cannot infringe upon the rights of others, upon their cultures and their choices. Yes, one day they will have a neat little set of rules to guide them, like Archer has often set his pen down to draft. But morality is not situational. On Earth no one had been able to see the early lunar colonies because they had been built on the side facing away from the planet, built to be easily forgotten. Many looked, but still did not see.

“I want to see this mission through,” Sim says. “I want to speak to the Xindi, to find out if there is a predicament that seems insurmountable to them. Maybe, if they ask, we could help. But only what they ask, and no more.”

It is a difficult thing from a strategic point of view. Building a planet killer is a hostile intent in itself, but they do not know the reason for the attack. If humanity is at fault, then they must seek to make up for that wrong. They must understand and accept that possibility.

A high pitched beep rings through the room, interrupting the mounting tension between them.

“The enzyme is viable, it will be synthesised within 24 hours. We can administer it after your operation.” Phlox places his hand on Sim’s shoulder. “I’m so happy for you, son.”

Sim smiles tightly. “There’s still no guarantee it’ll work.”

“We could run some tests.”

“How many years will I lose in the time that takes?”

Malcolm supposes that gambling a few days for a few decades is a risk worth taking, but it still rubs at him, the thought of being robbed with whatever precious time he would have left with Sim, no matter how difficult it would get.

“Well, I might as well start them now in case that changes,” Phlox says and flitters around the room.

Malcolm turns his head so that only Sim can hear. “I’m with you, whatever you choose.”

“I know,” Sim smiles, holding his gaze for an impenetrable moment.

“I hope this works for you,” Archer says. He doesn’t look happy, exactly. It takes Malcolm a while to place his finger on it, ticking it over in the back of his mind as he chats with Phlox and Sim, as he gives Sim a quick kiss goodbye. Archer hadn’t looked happy, he’d looked relieved.

He checks in on Trip before he leaves, stepping into one of the rooms off the main bay. He can feel the telltale burn of unshed tears as he looks on at the silent, flashing equipment, proof that Trip is still holding on. He wants to squeeze his hand or offer to smuggle engineering journals past Phlox’s tyrannical doctrine of rest in Sickbay, but Trip is stuck in a coma. Alive, in one way, dying in another. His chest rises and falls, but there’s no involuntary movement like there would be if he was taking a nap.

Malcolm had had a dream the other night, a nightmare really, where once they’d got Trip back he’d stayed unnaturally still. He’d dance at the ship’s parties, fix the engines as good as before, even finally improve his accent when speaking Vulcan. But he’d be still as the grave through it all, no involuntary movements, no snapping his fingers or licking of his lips, no aborted hand movements or shoulders wracked with laughter, a stiff Frankenstein like figure haunting them.

It was just a nightmare, and is at best a superfluous clue that he’s worried Trip won’t make it. Yet as he looks on at Trip, feeling as though there is an invisible barrier holding him back from touching him, Trip’s stillness gets to him. Trip is still stuck, like _Enterprise _is in the field.

“Rest well, my friend. I’ll see you soon.”

Malcolm finds Hoshi in the mess hall, finishing up a meal opposite T’Pol. He has a box of pralines under one arm and a glass of juice in the other. He should probably eat, but anything he sends down into the whirlpool of his stomach will get spat right back out again, he just knows it.

He watches them for a moment, catching the way they brush their fingers together in a Vulcan kiss. They’ve danced around each other for months, lost in a web of reasons and excuses, trying not to fall off a tightrope of emotion. But now they’ve met each other on that path across the chasm of uncertainty; are taking the risk of falling together. The moment shatters when T’Pol spots him, but it was never meant to last forever. His happiness for them extends beyond his quiet contemplation, coming off him in radio waves.

“Malcolm,” T’Pol greets, and her friendship feels like a gift.

“_Malc,_” Hoshi says and he joins them at the small table.

“First things first,” Malcolm says, aware of how prim he sounds. “I do believe congratulations are in order.” He moves his hand behind his back, pretending neither of them have seen the unwrapped box of chocolates, and presents it to Hoshi with a flourish. “For you, _Lieutenant_!”

She ducks her head and takes it. “Aw, you didn’t need to, Malcolm.”

“I thought gifts on such occasion were a human custom,” T’Pol points out kindly. “I have one I was going to give to you later.”

“The act of politely stating they aren’t strictly necessary is just as customary,” Malcolm smiles, catching T’Pol’s amusement. “This is where I insist she take them anyway.”

Hoshi kicks him so lightly under the table that it’s more like a cursory tap. “Thank you, they’re my favourites.”

He taps his nose and takes a sip of his juice.

“But don’t think this gets you off the hook! I’ve heard some chatter about you holding a certain tall blond’s hand in the corridors.”

While he hadn’t expected to avoid this conversation, nor does he really want to, he still feels somehow caught off guard. “The scuttlebutt isn’t wrong.”

Hoshi drags the words out. “So you… and Sim…”

“Me…” Malcolm can’t resist the urge to mimic the exact cadence of her words. “And Sim…”

T’Pol watches them with a large reservoir of patience she has built up in her years living amongst humans.

And really, they’re adults, shouldn’t it be easier than this? “We’re together.”

“I’m so happy for you!” Hoshi beams.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to tell you, it’s just still so new in a way.” Knowing that Sim would reach back for him, feeling like he could do the reaching in the first place… he’d never thought his life could encompass feeling this way.

“Yeah,” Hoshi agrees, smirking at T’Pol.

Now that he’s said it out loud to someone who isn’t Sim, it feels realer somehow, more solid in his mind. He thinks ahead, thinks that he’ll meet people and they’ll know his as Sim’s boyfriend. What will it be like, to be invited places as a package deal, to make use of loopholes in the codes of conduct and move into quarters together?

“You both look happy.” From T’Pol that’s as close to approval as he can get, short of a _you are both most logically suited for each other._

“Yeah, it’s great! Maybe we can even go on a double date.” Hoshi’s smiling, but it’s tight around her eyes.

They’re happy for him, for them both, but there’s something holding them back, making them worried. Malcolm knows what it is, can barely keep the thought banished at the edge of his mind. He sees himself through their eyes for just a second, sees Sim’s short lifespan and their desperate hope riding on an enzyme that might magically grant him what he wants more than anything else: an average human lifespan. It hits him like falling into ice water, the frozen fist around his heart squeezing.

“He found an enzyme, it’ll negate his rapid ageing.”

Malcolm thinks he’d known this was coming, the crash and fall. They’d been so happy, so relieved. No, that’s not right. He had. Sim had been more cautious. Perhaps he’d known Malcolm would react this way. Malcolm’s usually the last person to set himself up for disappointment. Or maybe that’s true except when it matters the most.

“Even with his hybrid biology?” T’Pol asks gently.

“There’s a chance,” _it won__’t work_, but he can’t say the words, because speaking them will make them true. He drops his head in hands, unable to look at either of his friends.

He’s is supposed to be the level-headed the one, the person to offer a realistic risk assessment. Putting so much hope in a plan so far-fetched is not a sound strategy, but how can he not hope, when it’s not about whether they can increase the range of the photon torpedoes, but about Sim?

He feels Hoshi’s hand squeeze his shoulder, feels grateful for the gesture.

“Of course there is,” Hoshi says. “I just worry about you.”

_And what about Sim?_ It feels almost cruel to think, but Sim would be the one losing his life. If the enzyme didn’t work it would kill him. Malcolm’s own loss seems negligible in comparison, no matter how well he knows that suffering is not a competition.

T’Pol’s voice is as calm as a lake without a ripple. “There is a Vulcan proverb. Nothing that is, is unimportant. The chance that it might not work is as real as the chance it will succeed.”

She makes it sound so profound—or actually, no. He’s just in a bit of a state.

“Isn’t there anything we can do? Is there anything in the Vulcan database on Lyssaria?” Hoshi asks, trying if only for the sake of trying. For Malcolm. For Sim.

“Nothing.” T’Pol looks remorseful.

It helps though, to know he and Sim aren’t alone in this.

Malcolm tugs at the collar of his shirt, then the hem, feeling grateful that the shirt hasn’t become ugly to him after all the months it had been left to collect dust in his quarters. It’s a rich, deep red that stands out from the greys, greens and blues of his other civvies. The reinstatement of movie night had been announced around lunchtime, the underlying understanding being that if tomorrow’s plan doesn’t work, then there isn’t really much hope in finding another one, so why not use up some power to have one last night when they can still believe. Or maybe he’s being morose.

Sim had found him adjusting some equipment with T’Pol, had made a bit of a show about asking him out like a proper Southern gentleman and all that. Sim had even given him a single dried flower from one of the botany labs. It had been unbearably sweet and romantic, and he’d felt his face burning for quite a while after Sim had left again. The flower is stashed between the pages of his favourite book of poetry, right between the old Brontë and last century’s _Chronicles of Lament,_ complied of poems written by survivors in the still radioactive cities left over from the purges.

The door swishes open, and Porthos runs out, barrelling right between his legs.

“Guess he’s had enough cuddles for now,” a rueful looking Sim says, close behind. He leans against the doorway. His hair is still little damp, presumably from showering—there’s no engine grease in sight. “Hi Malc.”

Malcolm's gaze tracks across his face and down his throat. His face is freshly shaved, but instead of the expected high silver collar, Sim is wearing a black, short sleeved button up. The buttons are done up unevenly, the arch of his collarbone peeking out of the uneven gash, a Bermuda triangle of temptation. "Er, sorry, I know I'm early."

Sim’s movements are fluid as he creates a space for Malcolm to slip through, but Malcolm prefers a more direct approach. He has no intention of slipping by when he can touch Sim like he’s been wanting to since he left him standing with a flower and a promise. Using both his palms, he pushes Sim backwards slowly, a thrill going through him at how gracefully he steps back, how comfortable he is letting Malcolm take the lead.

Malcolm steps through the door, dropping his hands from Sim’s chest as the flimsy excuse to keep them there dissolves completely. Trip's quarters look practically untouched, save for the duvet laying in a squiggle on his bunk. Is Trip this tidy, or is it Sim? Is Sim a visitor in a tomb, or an explorer in a life he has and has not lived?

“Phlox says the simulations so far look good. Nothing’s for sure without it being live sample, but, I think I have a real chance.”

Even with his new dams of fear in place, hope floods through him. It feels so human, so visceral, this belief that there can be a better future. It lives in a place he holds within himself, right at his immaterial core. “That’s wonderful! I—” He takes a breath to steady himself. “There’s nothing I want more for you.”

“For us,” Sim adds.

“For us,” Malcolm repeats, struggling with his words, wishing for the right ones to describe the way his insides are fizzing.

"I'm almost ready. Make yourself comfortable.” Sim gestures vaguely at the room before fiddling with his buttons again. He considers the bed, considers smoothing out the duvet or holding on to it as a poor substitute for who he’d rather be cuddling. Somehow the options just aren’t that appealing, not when Sim is right there, his skin a siren song.

Malcolm moves back towards him, like being drawn into stable orbit. "You're all wonky."

"What?"

"Let me help."

It takes a moment, but Sim nods once, sharply. Carefully, as if avoiding spooking a wild animal, Malcolm gently takes Sim's hands, pulling them away from the buttons to give him access. Squeezing once, he slowly sets about his task. He’s done this for other people before, but the memories are vague. It had been casual; an unthinking gesture that he never knew whether it had been appreciated or not, remembered or forgotten.

Staring at the bottom, he slides the shiny polyester through the eye like he’s done a million times before. No reason this should be any different, except that he can feel the soft puff of Sim’s breath against his jaw. If he let himself get closer, he’d feel his pulse, that telltale thrumming of blood. It feels sacrosanct to touch him, despite the fact that in some ways they’ve been just about as intimate with each other as two human beings can be.

Pulling the shirt towards him slightly, Malcolm skims his fingertips along the soft skin of Sim's stomach. He feels the way Sims breath hitches, his shirt moving with him, tugging against his grip. It's gratifying to touch; to be able to. To know he's not the only one affected.

The next buttons slide out easily.

“I feel a bit stupid, letting you do this,” Sim murmurs. “Like a kid.”

_Positively domestic_ are the words that slam into Malcolm’s mind. “It’s a sign of trust.”

“That you won’t maul me?” Sim's voice lacks the lightness for the joke he’s trying to make.

“If you like.”

When he reaches the top of the shirt, he brushes his knuckles against Sim’s collarbone, teasing a punch. The lines of his body are hard at times, but his touch would always be soft in comparison. Rough at times, but never in such a way to make Malcolm doubt his gentleness.

“You don’t need me to bare my neck to kill me,” Sim says. Malcolm supposes he _had_ been named the deadliest man on the ship in last years unofficial yearbook one of the botany labs had cooked up. He doubts even Hayes can snatch that title from him.

The shirt hangs open now, double doors that flank Sim’s dusty chest hair, the sure line of his sternum a racing strip that Malcolm’s hands itch to follow.

“No, probably not.” Malcolm offers him a small smile, daring to look at his face for just a moment. “Not that I’d want to.”

Tugging at his collar a bit too roughly, Malcolm lines the sides up.

Sim laughs, a huff of air. "Good. That's, uh, good to know."

Malcolm's nimble fingers make quick work of the buttons, not pausing to tease this time. "There," he does the last one up. "All done."

Before he can pull away completely, Sim catches his hands with his own. "Thanks."

Malcolm suddenly feels fragile, as if the pressure from Sims hands is so strong, it will crack and shatter his skin like glass. Sim presses a kiss against his fingers, uncomplicated and offhand. His stomach feels unsteady, fractures spreading through the knotted steel that lives there. The lights in Sim's cabin are so bright, he swears he can hear them humming. He can see every nook and cranny of Sim's face: the mole on his cheek, the wrinkles on his forehead, the divots in the corners of his eyes... and the amused slant of his mouth.

“You’re always doing that, all these little things for other people you don’t think are worth noticing.”

“Well,” Malcolm protests, “it’s just things anyone would do. You’re the one always looking out for people, making grand gestures.” Like the flower from earlier. He’d looked it up in the ship’s database. Apparently it only blooms for a few days a year in its natural habitat.

“It’s nothing, really,” Malcolm repeats, because it really isn’t. It’s like a leak he can’t plug, all the myriad ways he tries to be a better person, that better version of himself who is just out of reach. His work, now that he can take pride in. It’s a bit of a paradox, his confidence in his skill and uncertainty about everything else. Words never quite add up the right way, his jokes miss the mark, or he takes things too literally; he’s too tightly wound or too quiet, always somehow out of sync.

“Not to me,” Sim whispers, leaning closer. The tip of his nose bumps into Malcolm's. It’s all he needs to shatter inside.

Being with someone like this is not just about grand gestures or PDA or any single thing. It all adds up; can be understood in a strange feeling, the kind sometimes mediated by a look, or a touch, or a tone of voice. It strikes him in that moment how being with Sim makes him want to show him the worst and best parts of himself. It doesn’t hurt so much for someone to push you away because of the things you already find ugly and horrific, but to have the best parts of yourself rejected?

The steel in his stomach draws tighter, but it’s not all there anymore. He’s scared, of course he’s scared. But that’s not all he is; that’s not what defines how he acts. He says, “You mean a great deal to me.”

Sim drops Malcolm's hands, his fingers finding their way to the zippers of his trouser pockets. He tugs him closer. His shirt is soft beneath Malcolm's palms, the muscle beneath it is hard but not unyielding. The position is awkward, almost cramped, but with Sim’s lips suddenly moving against his, open mouthed and eager, he really couldn’t care less.

He can feel a quiet urgency in the kiss, something Sim isn’t saying with words but with his body. Malcolm responds in kind, the rhythm all at once familiar and insistent. It’s like a deep sea current: a warmth that tugs him this way and that through the cold of the world that surrounds them. Like how whales return along such currents to the same place every year, kissing Sim is like taking a journey that is his home. It feels right.

Malcolm catches Sim’s bottom lip as he leans back.

"We're going to be late,” Sim says unevenly, the hands he has around Malcolm’s waist holding on tightly.

Malcolm drags his thumb from Sims temple to his jaw. For a brief moment, he considers suggesting they skip the film. Skip the two hours of sitting up straight in slightly uncomfortable chairs, unsuited for cuddling, inviting conversation in the before and after parts. But then, this is Sim's first ever date. And that is more important._ Perhaps his only ever date, _a voice whispers in his head. _His first date, _he corrects.

“That won’t do.” He leans in for one last peck before stepping back. “Do you want help with your laces, too?”

“Nah,” Sim shakes his head, his face one wide sappy smile. “I think I can manage.”

He doesn’t expect the playful tap on his bum as Sim steps past him towards the bed. “Steady on!”

Sim replies with a toothy grin, not an innocent expression, but one of unencumbered joy. It makes Malcolm want to follow him, push him back onto the untidy bed and let him know exactly how he feels about having Sim’s hands all over him. Instead, he bites the inside of his cheek, looks away from where Sim is perching on the edge to tie the laces of his boots.

"How long have you been staying here?"

Sim has stayed in his quarters the past couple of nights, but even though there a few things of his laying around, it’s not like they’ve officially moved in together. If everything works, they could afford to take it slow, or slower speed of fast, considering that in all likelihood their next encounter with imminent death is not too far around the corner in the vast reach of the Expanse.

"I found myself coming here when I couldn’t sleep. That changed when, well, I could stay with you. Figured he wouldn’t mind if I borrowed one of his… less noisy shirts for a date.”

“Oh, so no impressionist print to stand out amongst a crowd?”

A chuckle. “Well, I’ve already got your attention haven’t I?”

“Cheeky.” He rocks back on his heels. It’s novel, to be bantering and going on dates when they’re supposed to be fighting for the survival of their planet. But then, lives go on, somehow days pass and planets keep spinning. “Yeah, you have.”

“I’ll just be a sec,” Sim says.

Malcolm takes a moment to examine the memorabilia lining Trip’s shelves, the action figures and the nicknacks he’s not heard stories about. He’d never bothered installing more than one shelf in his own quarters. Travelling light had been the norm since before Starfleet Academy, and well, it’d just look a bit a silly with empty shelves. But now he knows where he’d hang them, there’s space for two more on the walls, another above the desk, and for nights they’d just need a nifty bed extension.

He’s getting ahead of himself.

He faces the diver’s helmet hanging on Trip's wall. A relic of Sim's past, as of Trip's. He feels a strange kinship with it, imagining that they are both trapped inside a submarine as the air slowly runs out. The past has a way of catching up with you, and, he supposes, so does the present. The need he feels to be close to Sim is sometimes so intense it’s like the need to breathe while trapped underwater.

"Coming?" Sim's hand squeezes his hip as he passes.

Malcolm follows a few footsteps behind, catching up before Sim closes the door behind him. The hallways are the same dim grey as ever, the thud of his boots against the plating the same dull drumbeat, but there is a certain magic in walking shoulder to shoulder with Sim. He feels lighter, as if the gravity had been turned down just a bit, keeping them rooted, but feeling liable to float away.

The all-familiar grip of Sim’s hand keeps him tethered."So, you're the film expert. What's this one about?"

“Life, freedom, hope. It’s a classic.” Sim snorts. "Well, I suppose it's also a love story. Space opera, you know."

"Ah. The fate of the galaxy is at stake then?" He hopes that means it has explosions. It has to, and a spaceship fight. A chase scene, too, maybe.

"_Song of Singularity_? Yeah, Malc, it's the fate of the galaxy that's at stake. It's about the first real-life AI on Earth. Course, she doesn't like to be trapped..."

Who does? "So she's the villain?"

"Maybe."

Belatedly, it occurs to Malcolm that this story might not be dissimilar to Frankenstein. "Maybe?"

"You tell me in two hours." Sim’s expression is open, playful.

The kinds of films Malcolm usually watches are about battles, more like homework than entertainment. Movie night dramas have been known to bring a tear to his eye, not that he would readily admit to it. Usually, a good book at the end of the day is his poison of choice. But the idea of a film loaded up on the terminal for them to watch and discuss is not unappealing in the least. He wants Sim to use that line on him again, curled up in their own quarters, ones they share when they’re back to exploring. “Two hours?”

A kiss on his cheek. “Yeah, I want to hear everything.”

It should feel stranger, how fast someone can slip into your life as if they have always been there.

"Malcolm!" He hears Hoshi before he sees her. "Sim!" She’s clutching a bucket of popcorn excitedly.

"Hello Hoshi. Fancy seeing you here." Sim jokes.

"Like I'd miss this. _Song of Singularity? _What a classic!”

“A classic, really?” Malcolm asks.

Sim bumps their hips together. “A _classic _classic, not just for science fiction fans.”

“Phlox, you haven’t seen it, have you?” Malcolm asks, dragging him into their conversation.

“Oh I have! As part of my cultural preparation before initially coming to Earth. It actually helped me choose Earth over any of the other worlds I could have traveled to through the cultural exchange. In many ways, I owe this film a lot.” He smiles at them, too wide and full of love.

“I also watched it prior to my visit to the Vulcan embassy,” T’Pol says, joining them. There’s still time before the movie, the rest of the people are milling about and chatting, or tapping away at a PADD. “A stunning commentary on the common human theme of pitting safety against freedom or integrity.”

“Has everyone seen this movie except me?” Malcolm asks, peeved.

Sim scrunches his nose at him. “Sure looks that way.”

Malcolm rolls his eyes.

“I wish I could watch it again for the first time, you’re in for a treat.” Hoshi says kindly.

“Yes, it is an especially philosophical film,” T’Pol adds. “Earth’s wide range of visual entertainment has much to offer.”

Malcolm thinks about how most of the movies he watches are just another vehicle for working, perhaps even to help kid himself he’s not. There’s more to life than war and violence, more to it than trying to be one step ahead of everything, leaving no time and space for the more unreachable parts of himself to breathe. “It was good of the captain to reinstate movie night,” he says.

“Especially now,” Hoshi agrees. “It’ll do us all some good.”

It’s freeing to hear someone else say what he’s thinking, but more importantly perhaps, to feel that there’s no taboo on it anymore. Whether it’s denial or avoidance, part of facing fear is naming the thing that scares you. He thinks the Xindi, hell, every species using the field, must have their own name for it already.

“Yes, it’ll be sure to keep our spirits up,” Phlox smiles.

Malcolm feels bold, suddenly bolstered by the knowledge of how tomorrow hangs in the balance, their fate liable to tip one way or another. He snakes an arm around Sim’s waist, pressing himself closer in a way that until now he’s rarely understood. Sure, he’s been in relationships before, has done the whole hold-their-hand and peck-on-the-cheek, had even felt unrestrained enough to snog his then boyfriend in a public park once. But until now he’d never really considered that it wasn’t some kind of strategic move, a way to prove how in love you are. Logically, of course he knows that people don’t think like that, but it’s only now that he feels it, how uncomplicated his desire to just be closer to Sim is. To share this moment with him.

Sim’s arm comes to rest over his shoulders, and the heat of another body against his is pleasant on it’s own, but to know it’s Sim makes it magical.

He tunes back into the conversation. T’Pol is talking, “…making good headway with translating the messages. I think we’ll soon have enough to begin working on translating the message Archer has drafted.”

“Are you any closer to knowing how the field actually works?” Sim asks, looking at T’Pol intently, almost pleadingly. His memories, Malcolm remembers.

There’s a tense beat before she replies. “Our current hypothesis is promising, but disturbing. The other anomalies we’ve encountered so far have been unstable in some way or another, but we believe this one has rooted itself in a previously occurring phenomena in this region in space.”

“So its function to boost messages…” Hoshi trails off.

“Could it have been there before?” Sim asks for her.

“It is uncertain. We hope our current calculations will determine whether this ability existed previously. It is of course likely that the alterations to this region of space are irreversible, even if executed by whoever controls the spheres.”

“Because it’s somehow linked to the fabric of our universe instead of intruding from another dimension.”

T’Pol nods. “Precisely.”

“What does that mean exactly?” Phlox frowns.

“This region of space may be this way forever. But it only appears to be dangerous to anyone actually entering the region.”

“You’d think they’d put up warning signs,” Malcolm says. Other dimensions. He studied physics, of course, but it was applied physics, engineering and the history of weaponry coupled with intense physical training. He understands the multi-verse theory, can just about grapple with string theory, but this stuff just leaves him feeling confused.

“We probably missed them,” Hoshi points out.

They’d thundered into the field at full speed, eager to test the engine’s upgrades and landing Trip in a coma. “You’re right.”

“May I?” Phlox gestures at Hoshi’s popcorn. She nods, and he tries a few pieces. “Mm, very sweet.”

“Do you guys want to sit with us? I’ll share." She shakes the bucket she's holding.

"Thanks, Hoshi, but I think I spy the perfect seats over there." Malcolm nods to the side with his head, already eyeing a couple of seats where the view is not too bad, but they’re also not the centre of attention

"Oh, of course," she says, blushing slightly. "I think there's still some popcorn left, if you want some. Chef went all out, there's even toffee flavour."

"Good call," Malcolm nods in thanks, already plotting out the fastest way to the buffet table around the obstacle course of his colleagues.

"See ya later Hoshi, T’Pol, Dad." Sim waves, Malcolm tugging insistently at his other hand. There are only a few buckets left, and with so many people standing around empty-handed, it’s only smart to try and get there as fast as he can.

He ducks and weaves around their crew mates, most of them still dressed in blue, but a few, like him and Sim, are in their civvies. Sim follows two steps behind him, and Malcolm can feel the laughter shaking through his body and into his own hand. He can laugh, but there are only two buckets left. They need to be swift.

Reaching the table, he disentangles their hands and expertly grabs the last bucket, sending an apologetic look to the ensign who had been a few seconds behind him. He does his best to look sincere, but his heart’s not in it. Chef is probably on his way with more buckets anyway, the buffet table is usually restocked before the movie starts.

"Didn't know you like popcorn that much." Sim's voice is low in his ear, and he can feel his breath against his cartilage, teasing, before Sim moves away again, heading towards the seats Malcolm had pointed out.

"It's not a must, but I, well—” he takes a few long strides to catch up. “I was thinking you'd probably like some, love.”

They take their seats, Sim sitting by the aisle, acting as a shield to the rest of the room.

Malcolm presses the bucket into his hands. "I want it to be a good first date, and all that. Popcorn with a movie is traditional."

Sim's eyes soften, transforming his whole gorgeous face.

He leans across the bucket and places a kiss on Malcolm's left cheek. His lips are soft, and his five o'clock shadow tickles a little. Malcolm gets a whiff of Sim’s woody aftershave. It only lasts a couple of seconds, but he misses his warmth as soon as Sim pulls away. Catching a flurry of movement behind Sim's shoulder, he spots Hoshi shooting him a big double thumbs up from across the room. He presses his face into Sim’s shoulder.

“Well, so far it’s the best date I’ve been on with you,” Sim says, bringing a hand up to cup the nape of Malcolm’s neck, rubbing tiny circles into the skin.

“It’s the only date you’ve been on with me,” Malcolm points out.

Sim hums. “Definitely best company I’ve had on a date.”

“I wish I could take you out somewhere planetside.” It doesn’t have to be Earth, even Risa would do in a pinch. It’d make for a laugh, at least.

“We’ll just have to get creative then.”

Malcolm leans back and picks a few pieces of popcorn from the bucket. The toffee is sickly sweet on his tongue, gooey even as he crunches.

“Worth the rush?” Sim asks, bemused.

“Absolutely.” Sim's gaze follows his tongue as he licks the rest of the sweetness from his fingers.

"You'll be the death of me," Sim mutters, his voice more husky than it was a minute ago.

Malcolm smirks. "I worked hard to snag this for us. It would be a shame to let it go to waste."

"You're supposed to wait for the film to start, it's traditional."

Malcolm laughs, wonderfully at ease. "If you say so."

"I do say so.”

Sim leans in close again, the tip of his nose brushing against Malcolm’s ear, “And you know, if you're bored between explosions, you can always hold my hand."

"Is that also traditional?"

Sim looks at him as if he is sharing a secret about the inner workings of the universe. "Yes."

As the lights dim, and the opening tones of the movie sound, Malcolm faces the screen with a smile on his face.

They’re on their way back to Malcolm’s quarters when Sim makes his move, unsubtly pressing Malcolm against one of the walls.

“I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” Sim says, leaning down to stick his nose into the crook of Malcolm’s neck.

“Do what?” Malcolm asks, feeling playful as he hooks his thumbs through Sim’s belt loops.

“Touch you. Properly.”

Malcolm’s thoughts are like leaves on a lake, spinning ever faster as the wind picks up, rippling into each other. “Patience is a virtue.”

Sim pushes himself closer, still not _properly _touching, not _properly _crowding Malcolm against the wall. This section of B deck does not see much traffic, but Malcolm glances over Sim’s shoulder anyway. Paranoid.

“A goodbye kiss is—"

Sim kisses the corner of Malcolm’s mouth, a touch that’s barely there. He finishes his sentence in a hot puff of breath against Malcolm’s lips. “Traditional.”

“What kind of kiss?” Malcolm reaches up to hold Sim’s shoulders, glad Sim is already leaning down the perfect amount. “One like this?”

And he goes for something less chaste, sliding their lips together, teasing.

“That would do, yeah,” Sim answers.

“Too bad, I don’t want to say goodbye yet.”

Sim kisses him again, longer this time. “Neither do I.” Then he kisses Malcolm in earnest, drawing him into the white-water whirlpool of sensation.

Malcolm’s fingers curl tighter around the denim loops of Sim’s trousers and he tugs him close enough that they’re touching, that the line of Sim’s broad shoulders presses against his own. Malcolm pulls a shuddering breath into his shaking lungs. “My quarters, now.”

With gentle push of Malcolm’s knuckles Sim relents, pulling back a few inches. Something more serious settles in his chest and he says: “Let me take you home instead.”

Sim looks at him, his eyes the colour of forget-me-nots. “Okay. Take me home.”

The short walk and quickly tapped security code both take too long and not long enough. He catches his breath, thrumming with a heady thrill from just a kiss. He lets Sim into his quarters.

As soon as the door swishes shut his hands are on Sim’s hips, pushing him back against it, reversing their positions in the hall.

“Hi,” Sim says, his mouth twisting into a lopsided smile.

“Hello yourself.” He tilts Sim’s chin up and curls his hand around the back of his neck, dragging him down an inch for a kiss.

Their noses knock into each other, but then he feels hands cupping his face, thumbs brush over his temples and angle his head so that they can slide together more easily. Sim tastes faintly of toffee, but instead of sticking their lips slide against each other, like the ebb and flow of the tide, rushing in to meet him, receding only to return, drawing him in and letting him drown ever so sweetly.

When Sim pulls back, Malcolm feels weak at his knees. His skin itches with the need to peel off some layers. "The bed's more comfy."

“Good idea.” Sim’s hand move to his hips, strong and sturdy as any bulkhead, and Malcolm lets himself be slowly walked backwards, enjoying the gentle pecks to his lips as they move. Minus their shoes, they sit face to face on his bunk.

Malcolm slides his hands upwards, catching the peaks of Sim’s nipples through his shirt.

“Wait a minute,” Sim says, catching his wrists.

Why does he sounds so serious? It takes a few moments for Malcolm to switch gears. “Of course.”

“No—I—clothes off?”

Shaking Sim’s grip off, Malcolm nimbly unbuttons his shirt. “That can be arranged.”

But instead of starting on his own clothes, Sim just watches him, gaze appreciative.

He lets himself look, too, as Sim undresses, and after. Like touching sand on a beach for the first time on a sweltering day, Sim’s skin is irresistible, and almost too much to want to try again. He traces lines between the moles, leaving kisses and nipping at the skin. “You’re so gorgeous, Malc.” Sim has a thing for the sensitive skin at his wrists and hips, caressing his body like summer wind, every faint stirring teasing a full-blown breeze. He takes his time before he finally puts his mouth on Malcolm.

It’s like sinking into a hot spring, all heat and mounting pressure. He’d like to go to a proper one someday; he thinks it would suit them, but then Sim does something with his tongue and he’s moaning, the world falling away, leaving only him and Sim.

He looks down at how Sim’s thumbs curve over his hip bones, the tangle of his blond hair, freed from its gel confines for the night. Then it’s too much, and he’s closing his eyes, letting the current take him, turn him into sea foam, light and fluffy, liable to float away. But Sim’s hands hold him, keep him close, anchoring him.

Sim kisses him wet and sloppy, and he can feel the hard press of Sim’s desire against his thigh. There’s no urgency to it, only tension, but Malcolm’s eager all the same. Even amid the haze of his orgasm, he rolls Sim, the bunk only just wide enough for it.

Sim whimpers beneath him. It all passes in a lazy blur of locked lips and frantic touching. Malcolm tries to keep up his legendary precision but the emotion of it all is overwhelming. He feels like he’s racing along unseen pathways, as if he’s feeling his journey on the river of time with a greater awareness than usual. The moment drags out, expanding in a way the laws of physics shouldn’t allow, burning through them in an echo of eternity.

Then Sim groans low in his throat, piercing Malcolm to his very core. How strange and wonderful it is to be human. He increases his pace, Sim moving against him in sync. He tightens his grip just a bit further and it pushes Sim over the edge, scrabbling to cling onto Malcolm as he rides his orgasm out.

Malcolm lets himself lay on top of Sim until an insistent hand nudges at his shoulder, cajoling him all the way into the bathroom for a quick clean up with a flannel and squinting into the mirror’s lights as he does his best to brush his teeth while half asleep.

“Let me be the big spoon this time?” Sim asks, holding the duvet up with one arm from where he’s already laying in the bunk.

“Sure.” Malcolm slips in beside him, relishing being wedged between his lover and cottony fresh sheets.

“Tonight’s been amazing,” Sim sighs, the arm he’s slung over Malcolm coming to rest with his hand over Malcolm’s heart.

Malcolm smiles into the dark. “Yeah, it was really lovely.”

“It felt a bit weird. Like I’m somehow unscathed while you all suffered.”

Malcolm makes a questioning noise, the dark of his eyelids only fractionally darker than the room, the screen over the window blissfully blocking out the field’s purple and orange.

“I don’t remember that much after the attack. Because of all the new memories I was making.”

“There’ll be chance enough for that once we’re out the field,” Malcolm says, hating the bitter truth of it. “No one resents you for it. We each have our own burdens.”

Sim squeezes him tighter.

Malcolm doesn’t want to end the night on that note though. “There’ll also be time for everything else. One infinity after the next, so many moments…” but as he tries to articulate himself, all he can think about is how soft the pillow is and how comforting Sim feels pressed along his back.

“You’re not making much sense, darlin’,” Sim says fondly.

“Mmm.” Tomorrow. Tomorrow he and Travis will get into the two shuttlepods and try to tow then out of the nightmare. Tomorrow he’ll wake up in Sim’s arms. “Love you.”

He falls asleep, content.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to my two beta readers who helped enrich this story, and thank you to everyone who commented & kudos-ed!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want a happy end, stop reading after the first sex scene.

"Trav, do you read me?" Malcolm asks, using the private channel between the two shuttles. Standard procedure dictates he address Travis with his rank and surname, Ensign Mayweather, but right now he doesn't care. Retaining a chain of command is essential under pressure, its collapse directly translating into casualties and mission failure. But right now he judges it to be allowed. They’re so alone out here, with only each other to rely on, that keeping close and reminding each other that they’re not actually alone, that they can do this together, is more important.

If they’re to die saving the ship, he’d rather die as who he is now, not the man who didn’t know any other way except to hide behind formality. It has its place, respect and need twining together here in the deep, but respect is earned, and he stays his course. HE respects Travis and loves him as a friend.

Since the very beginning, he’s always had a warm smile ready, an interesting story to tell, a joke to ease the tension. It must come in handy, having always lived on a ship, with very few options to get away from other people. Out here Malcolm can’t slip out to the abandoned industrial sector of the town like he did when he was a kid, or walk down by the bay like at the Academy. In between he had found calm while tinkering with the junk left over at the garage. When he’d led the scouts, it had been the forest. When flying shuttles and helping rebuild the last corners of the Earth it had been the sky, its calm embrace while in the air, a reassuring blue, always returning to that colour in the daylight, still there despite the atrocities committed below.

The quietest place he had ever been was Mount Shiribetsu in Japan, a dormant volcano, where despite the heat and nagging worry that if something went wrong, he was all alone, could he handle it? The quiet from even wildlife was a comfort. It was an expected quiet, a natural one, unlike in the Mauritanian radiation zone he had visited, one of many left over from the Eugenics wars.

From the great height of the volcano he had been able to see if anyone approached long before they reached him. On Enterprise he’s learnt how safety means relying on one other, both in being able to and to take the leap of faith and place your trust in another human being. 

Now their trust has been put in this last ditch, crazy plan. The modifications have been made, the grappler hooks are attached and ready to be deployed, and he and Travis are taking off out the shuttle bays doors and into the purple sky.

"Loud and clear, Lieutenant Malcolm." Travis' voice is slightly distorted over the comm, but his humour comes through five by five. "Clearing the bay doors presently, over."

Surrounded, the orange swirls look beautiful, like seaweed dancing in deep sea currents. Entrancing, but deadly. Even as the field sucks them dry it remains fascinating and strange, beautiful in its own way. But unlike any human or alien, it does not have a will to go with its body, it remains an improbable space phenomenon. Its chokehold on the ship is not purposeful or malicious, it is simply a by-product, impersonal in a way that only nature is.

Nature will claim them, if they stay here long enough. Not just in the field, but back home, too. Even with the advances in terraforming technology, Malcolm doubts that if he lives to die of old age he won’t see the zones recovered within his lifetime. The next generation, or perhaps the one after—if they can save them from the threat of annihilation.

"How are we doing?" Archer's voice comes to life through the machinery. Malcolm is used to the sound of technological crackle over voices, the strange closeness and not closeness of human connection over coms.

It makes him remember the tale of Bawang Putih and Bawang Merah, where it is a fish that speaks with Bawang Putih's mother's voice, returned from the dead to lend her comfort. He'd first heard it in hospital. A man had told his daughter stories until she fell asleep. Every night he had visited her in the bed beside Malcolm’s. A week later Malcolm been released with a long list of allergens and medical conditions to be looked at, but in that time his own father hadn’t visited him once. His mother had called him on the coms, her voice in his ear as he'd held a hand against the window, trying not to let tears spill down his cheeks because then the others in the room would see his fear.

“Looking good, sir,” Travis answers, easy and laid back, sounding as relaxed as on a practice run in dry dock. It’s a honed skill, he’s sure.

"All systems ready. We'll notify you when we're in position." Malcolm clicks the comm link decisively, going back to his and Travis' channel. "Okay Travis, let's ease into it."

"Aye aye." Travis laughs. "Thank goodness these babies are long, we're going to be putting out a lot of heat."

"Any other day, people would be fighting to be sitting where we are," Malcolm muses. Or where he is, rather. Travis would get one of the seats, no doubt about it. He's the best pilot on the ship and in the entirety of Starfleet, though it's a title he'll be defending every time they go back Earth, he's sure of it.

Earth. The quiet of the radiation zones. Rain against glass. A 700 mile gash through North America. Malcolm scrubs his hands down his face and wills himself to focus.

He presses the right buttons in the right order, starting up the engines. Nothing goes wrong. It’s the same any other mission. In his mind, everything slowly peels, like stripping down wiring. To get out of the field, he needs to pilot a shuttle in a fusion over burn. To do that he and Travis must pilot the shuttles into position. So he pushes the buttons, uses the attached yoke to get the pod in into just the right position, then counts down for them to launch the grappler hooks. They attach without a hitch.

"Oh, I'm still pretty excited," Travis grins, picking their conversation back up again. "If you've got to go..."

"Yes, I suppose it is a hell of a way. Not with a whimper, but a bang."

"What's that?"

"An old poem. T. S. Eliot."

Travis laughs again, but softer this time. They're pull forward, like eels swimming though the depths of the ocean light cannot reach. "My Dad used to do that. Recite poems. He had one for every occasion. Leaving dock, ion storms, when my brother would try cooking..."

Malcolm laughs well on cue. It's a gift, really, Travis' natural charm and how well he knows everyone. "Just how bad a cook is he?" Family is not a topic Malcolm likes, but the catch and clench in his stomach is no longer automatic.

"Oof, awful. He can manage meatballs and spaghetti alright, but anything more ambitious... well."

"Now the cards for Chef make more sense." There's always be something when a crew member has a birthday. Captain Archer had held a big party in a cargo deck, Hoshi preferred a small affair for those closest to her, Travis had asked chef to do a buffet, Trip had organised a whole day horror screening for anyone who wanted to drop in and... Malcolm would never forget how the bridge crew had surprised him with cake his first year on Enterprise.

"Hey, he was very touched!"

"On his birthday_ and_ on Valentine's day," Malcolm points out in good humour. The veneer of their conversation is thin, but he's grateful they've got something to help carry through the field, more alone on the shuttlepods than they had felt on the ship.

Because for all that Travis replies with a long argumentative ode to Chef's skills in the kitchen, that's what Malcolm is. He's alone in a glorified tin can with some string attaching him to the immense weight they're going to have to try to pull. The possibility of dying is something Malcolm prefers not to linger on, but it's there every day, and he carries his awareness of it like a penny in his back pocket.

"Almost there," Travis says, and Malcolm palms the dial to unmute the end of their coms to the bridge.

"Almost in position, Captain."

"We're good to go at our end. At your leisure, gentlemen." Malcolm can hear Archer's stiff posture in his voice. Formality is a tricky thing, he decides. Delicate or clumsy depending on how it's wielded.

They finally reach the end of the lines. His shuttle buffets against the tension, like being carried on the gentlest of waves. He swallows, and reminds himself that this is the present. He is 36 years old, he's head security officer of the Enterprise, and everyone on board that ship is relying on him and Travis to get them out.

He breathes in his nose and out through his mouth.

"Ready now, on my count."

Stripped down, focusing is easy, his head level and mind sharp. Surveillance is different, requiring constant awareness, threat assessment and flexibility. But in the shuttle he has the reassurance of strict parameters he's chosen to accept, the outcomes of success or failure spelling life or death, no semantics or degrees of danger to get caught up in.

"Now!"

To initiate the burn, he must press the right buttons in the right order, starting with the first one. And so he does. And then he presses the next one, and the next, his world one muscle pull after another.

"Holding!" He can hear the elation in Travis' voice. He'd recognised him as an adrenaline junkie within the first month, always straining against the bonds of what is supposed to be possible.

Malcolm feels as if they're in a poem from when battles were fought on horses and the smallest wound could leave you dead. If they make the slightest mistake as they send the plasma engines into overburn, they'll blow. "Engine temperature's nearing critical."

The tiny bar on his dashboard slowly slides further and further into the red. It doesn't feel real in the way a firefight does, much less a fistfight. There his body tells him what he needs to know without words, to duck or kick, evade or attack, his life literally hanging on a knife's edge. It's only as the shuttle begins to rock and splutter that it gets through to him that he's about to die.

_Not with a whimper, but with a bang_, he reminds himself. If their pods explode, it might just be enough momentum to get them moving.

Travis chimes in, "I've got a warning light."

"500 degrees above critical," Malcolm reads off, his training helping him speak as realisation sinks in. He's at peace with it, that hasn't changed. He knows the remorse and regret about dying before his time, the familiar tug of his heart towards the_ Enterprise—_as long as she's still flying, he should be with her. But there's a new cord of pain, strangling his ribs and choking him. Sim.

"Malcolm," Travis says. The indicator blinks at him, telling him that Travis has switched to their private channel. "If we repolarise the magnets along the positron stream, that could buy us a few extra seconds."

Before he gets a chance to reply, the channel switches again. Archer's voice filters through the speaker. "Reed, Mayweather."

Malcolm recognises the sharp intake of breath that always precedes bad news, or an order that Archer does not want to give. His world becomes suspended in that slight hesitance, time stretched out into ever smaller parts. If he examines it too closely, the bonds between the parts might snap, leaving him stranded in this moment. Archer is about to ask them to stand down, he knows it in his bones.

And Malcolm will ignore the order; this is their last chance to get out alive, however slim, however hopeless. He has to try.

To Travis he says: "Let's do it."

Maybe he and Archer have always been headed towards this moment, a fatal collision course of iron wills that leaves careers and lives as collateral. There's no ill will between them, but there is a limit to what Malcolm will submit himself to. He sees no reason not to try to the best of their ability. He is not throwing his life away carelessly or recklessly, this is no matter of hot-headed insubordination.

The shuttle shudders beneath his fingers as he goes along the row of switches, flicking them in desperate hope.

No one is perfect, no one is always right. In any other situation, he'd make himself listen, make himself understand that he's not going it alone. But this is all they have left, and the steel in him knows he can take it, knows that any chance is worth it. He and Archer aren't on bad terms; he's glad for that, at least.

All at once, the tin can stops shaking. It settles into the reassuring, if more intense than usual, hum of smooth sailing.

“You did it,” Archer days, breathless and stunned.

Travis whoops loudly, saving Malcolm from having to find something to say. His sigh of relief is eloquent enough in the privacy of the shuttle. The tension in his body unlaces itself, steel relaxing its grip and returning him to an ease he’s all but forgotten. They’re going to make it, and soon the nightmare sky will be with them only as a memory.

“Alright, we’ve got the momentum we need. Shuttlepods One and Two, return to dock.”

“Aye sir,” Malcolm and Travis reply in unison.

“First humans to survive a fusion overburn in a shuttlepod, it sure feels good,” Travis sighs, back on their private channel.

“First humans to survive this bloody field sounds even better to me,” Malcolm admits, riding an adrenaline high, just the same as Travis. The world is more vivid, the colours blurrier and more intense.

Malcolm’s seen Travis do exquisite tricks with the shuttlepod while in this state, and unfortunately while he’s been on board with Travis at the helm, too, but never more than once. The lesson about his stomach’s sensitivity was one not soon forgotten. But, alone in his pod, all he feels is stretched too thin.

“They’ll have to write us our own record book,” Travis agrees.

Engines safely shut down, they let themselves be reeled back in by the grappler lines.

"Where did you learn that?" Malcolm asks, his high beginning to diffuse as the danger fades. His heart pounds against his ribs loudly, too loudly.

Travis is still flying high though. “Old boomer trick. Helps shave fuel off when need you need a bit of a push, especially if you’re loads a bit heavier than anticipated.”

Of course. There were always provisional stores in case a child or two was born during the treks, and a fuel buffer for that and other predictable contingencies. “It’s a good trick to have up your sleeve.”

In space you can try to plan for ahead, try to think about everything that could wrong, plan for hell or high water. But for all their quarantine procedures and EV suits, there is no shutting out life. He’s a firm believer that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, but most of the time worrying doesn’t help. A reasonable amount of caution and protection, though, that can go a long way.

“It certainly deserves a toast in your honour,” Malcolm says.

There’ll be some kind of celebration, a small window of relief and joy before they’re back to racing across the Expanse. There are messages to send and aliens to find and wars and genocide to stop. But before he can lose himself to some reasonable and called for worrying about it, a tell-tale thud tells him Shuttlepod One is safely inside the bay.

He wills himself to concentrate on his breathing as gravity slowly trickles back and thinks about how he and Sim can celebrate their escape, just the two of them.

Sim doesn't wait for him at the doors to the bay. His place is on the bridge, and from what Malcolm can hear over the comm, they're still checking and double checking that they are, in fact, going to make it out. Nadia smiles widely as she helps him with his suit, her nod confirming that another unprecedented emergency aside, they've made it. They're safe. It’s about twenty hours until they cross the threshold into normal space, but breathing is suddenly easier.

She has to rush off halfway through, but the top half of his suit has been opened far enough for him to manage on his own. He’s sent back reports about the suits, in an emergency only Crewman Alvarez can zip up her own, a quirk of her prosthetic arm she’s modified for that very purpose.

Being stuck inside the tight confines of the suit feels like death slowed down to its most basic movements, unable to help yourself and waiting on the mercy of others. But that is not what human action should be reduced to. It is an imposed mischaracterisation, that all one may hope for is mercy.

He tugs the breastplate off, thinking of how the crew reaches for each other. Helping one another is the paper lives are writ upon, some anthropologists even consider it the turning point in our becoming human.

The thrum running through the floor plating is familiar, yet in the past week he’s got used to its lower intensity, the inertial dampeners less effective nearer the edge of the ship. Or maybe that’s just his imagination. Outside the port window purple rushes past, the swirls of orange dancing like helixes winding ever around themselves—but moving. And therefore, no longer their tomb.

The aftershock hits him right then: a tall wave of burnt up adrenaline and relief breaking against the flimsy barriers between him and the world. He staggers. It’s always like this, when there’s too much going in for his brain to sort out, his connection to reality becoming a flashing warning light.

He washes up back into awareness with his hands clenched around the edge of the bench in the middle of the room. Slowly, he regulates his breaths. Reminds himself he is not underwater; there is plenty of air here. They will make it out and have enough power to recycle more than any of them will need in an entire lifetime.

“Hey, darlin’.”

Sim, all too familiar but not familiar enough. A brief hand on his shoulder that retreats when he flinches. A warm presence beside him as he resumes breathing, the lights too bright, the air too heavy, the noise driving into the back of his skull like a shard of ice.

Every word is pressed through four times Earth’s gravity. “Just need a minute.”

“Anything—everything you need,” Sim reassures.

Malcolm counts again. In and out, up to twenty-four and from the top again. The suit presses against him, the too tight brush with death caging up to his bellybutton and no further. The world moves and moves, or rather its people do, time and thought swallowed up by bureaucracy and exhaustion. He wonders where his complaint is now, swallowed up in an archive or waiting for lacklustre consideration of an overworked desk jockey?

And it’s no one’s fault that the new, human purpose of betterment trips itself up. It’s all this acting, this obfuscation, as if there is such a thing a blank slate. History exists and history is written, rewritten, and recreated. There had been a special meeting for accepting Alvarez into the academy. He’d been furious when he’d heard. It had been the same for him, having to declare that part of his intestine is artificial, and fighting to be let in anyway. There was no structure in place to provide support, no attitude of responsibility for all. Phlox checks on it every three months like clockwork, just one more box to check on the regular physical all members of the crew have to undergo.

One hand moves of its own accord, and he pretends he can feel where the energy beam misfired, that time he tried to kill his father. His stomach had been burnt and mangled, the skin and tissue beneath were as healthy as ever now, though the rest of him feels he is still healing. It had been the first time he’d truly understood death, that there are many kinds of death and that there would be no end to that understanding.

“You alright?” Malcolm asks, turning his head. Sim is the normal level of saturated, the world returned to its normal level of intensity.

“I feel like I should be asking you that,” Sim smiles, but there’s a brittle note of seriousness in his voice. Gesturing, he waits for Malcolm to nod before he reaches for him. Slowly, under the gentle stroking of Sim’s thumbs, his fingers unfurl from around the bench.

Sim envelops him in a hug. With his face pressed into Sim’s shoulder, Malcolm feels the pull of him more strongly than ever. It’s familiar and reassuring and something he knows will always be ready to beckon him in again, but not inescapable, not unwilling to let him go as far away as he would like, for as long as he would. Right now, though, there’s no place he would rather be.

A minute passes before Sim speaks. "Malc, you did it.” A hand rubs over his back. “We’re free.”

"Your modifications did it," Malcolm moves so more of his face peeks out above Sim’s shoulder, but keeps his eyes closed. "And Nadia's finetuning, and Travis' trick and—"

"Malc," Sim interrupts, squeezing a little. “C'mon."

“I was ready to die,” Malcolm blurts, the words feeling incredibly small, slipping into the crevices left between them, tiny plankton drifting through an ocean of atoms and molecules.

“To make sure we got out,” Sim says. Malcolm is surprised by how calm he sounds; realises he has been expecting anger or hurt. “I know.”

“You do?”

“That’s who you are Malcolm, a protector. I wouldn’t change that for the world, though I do prefer it that you lived.”

Malcolm kisses the skin above Sim’s collar he can reach. “Yeah, me too.”

Sim holds him tighter, as if he could be gone at any moment. Any mission might be Malcolm's last, but he'd rather die as he lives, die as who he is; finally alive as himself.

But there's a new pain in the idea that along with everyone else, he'll be leaving Sim behind. It strengthens his resolve instead of weakening it, but it’s a new thread woven into his being, a gust of wind behind his sails that buoys him as well as freezing him to the core.

Suddenly, it is too much. Mal squirms and Sim loosens his hold so he can lean back, face flushed and unable to look at Sim’s face. It is ugly, somehow broken, the pragmatic way he thinks about his own life. It must be. His nickname had been Ice Man back at the academy, not just frosty and stern but uncompromising and unfeeling. Too cold to ever want to touch, buried beneath a glacier of lists and routines and relentless practicality.

“I’ve never told anyone that before.” The words are thin as wisps, doing barely more than rustling in the air. His capacity for self-sacrifice has never come up in any Starfleet ethics or protocol discussion nor in any drunken late-night confessionals at the 602. He wants to bury his face in his hands. He doesn't know where necessity ends and the parts of him that feel alien when compared with the rest of humanity begin.

As if sensing his desire to retreat behind his walls, Sim reaches to cup his face, his index finger curling behind Mal’s ear. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of gumption, y’know.”

“A lot of what?”

Sim smiles, looking up at him beneath his lashes. They are close enough to count. “Courage. Bravery. I know you don't want to die, but you stick to what you believe in. I love that about you."

“You sweet talker.” But Malcolm knows he will keep this moment close to his heart for the rest of his life. Whatever lives inside Malcolm, Sim welcomes it. Whatever is too alien back on Earth, is at home here in space, accepted among the others who feel they don’t fit either.

“S’true,” Sim says, his accent thick with emotion.

The attention should be stifling, but instead the vulnerable quivering inside his chest feels soothed, vibrating at a new frequency. It’s different than the bone deep satisfaction from knowing you’re living how your inner compass guides you. All the pain he holds within his body is no longer an island only he can visit. Malcolm trusts himself to Sim. He would take everything inside of himself and place it in Sim’s hands to hold, but he no longer feels the need.

"Has Phlox got back to you about the enzyme?" Malcolm asks.

"Delyssariarification-methyl-transferase, that's what we're calling it. Or DLMTase for short. It functions by setting a chain of reactions in motion, the result of which is that the responsible Lyssarian DNA is wound so tight its expression is inhibited, meaning my body will stop producing the proteins that speed up the ageing process. The Larvae DNA essentially acts as a modifier to the DNA it’s inserted into, so without it I can age just as Trip would.”

"It does feel a bit silly to keep calling it _the enzyme_, doesn't it," Malcolm asks, feeling breathless not from laughing, but from how Sim can't keep a wide smile off his face. That grin means good news, means—

"It works," Sim grins. "I get to live. We get our life. We get to live, Malc."

He brings his hand up to grip the back of Sim’s neck, the short hairs bristling under his fingers as he steers them together. The kiss is exoneration, speaking for him where his words fail him. His happiness explodes like a solar flare, a Coriolis movement directing him at Sim, pushing them together. He is the same self he has always been, yet the notion of himself shifts and spins, slippery as the orange gas in the field. He’s capable of love despite being told otherwise. He’s tender with his hands that so often do violence. Their future, like their past, has not yet finished being written. It is alive between them, passed back and forth like an electron between ionised atoms. The future is the present that they are reimagining, that they are thereby choosing.

"My suit," Malcolm rasps, "then—my room."

"Yeah, that's—yeah." Sim cups his cheek. "Let me help."

Malcolm lets Sim take care of detaching the clips between the outside suit, padding and undersuit, the uncovered layer of silver on his skin matching Sim's jumpsuit. He steps out delicately as Sim holds the bulky waist and pulls it down, relishing the uncomfortably smooth feeling of the floor underneath his socked feet. Sim runs a palm up his calf, still crouched on the floor, following the soft place behind Malcolm’s knee up his thigh.

“Easy,” Malcolm warns, offering Sim a hand to help him up.

"Leave it on, it's a short walk," Sim suggests, putting the rest of the suit in the compartment for cleaning and starting the cycle.

The feel of the suit itches at him, but the need for efficiency overrides his discomfort. He steps into the boots Nadia left for him and Sim grabs his uniform, tugging him down the hall. Sim's worn out and impatient, overjoyed and demanding, his enthusiasm finding a matching current in Malcolm, eddying it.

They get a few odd looks, and even a snicker. Mostly everyone is too elated to spare his attire much notice. He gets a high five, but Sim takes the brunt of congratulatory shoulder slaps and comments. Pulling at Malcolm’s hand, they make it through to the deserted hallway outside Malcolm’s quarters, and then in through the door, finally alone again.

Sim's urgency comes to a head as he presses Malcolm back against his door, fingers under his chin tilting his head up. The way Sim kisses him—teeth and spit and a hot press of hips—he’s glad he waited for them to be inside where Malcolm doesn’t have to think twice about sliding his hands down Sim’s back and grabbing his arse.

They don’t stay there for long. Malcolm needs the undersuit off _now. _Sim’s clothing follows, leaving him naked and laughing, letting Malcolm hold him and caress him until Sim pushes him back into his bunk. The space is too small for two grown men, but with Sim’s body covering his they make it work.

“Sim!" The word is torn from him as he shivers in Sim’s grasp.

Sim has slid one hand sound his ribs and is using the other to help him lave at Malcolm's collarbone, hot stokes of his tongue punctuated by nips against his bone. Tiny explosions of pain pop among the onslaught of pleasure, breaking against his skin more and more intensely. It sends heat through him, a coursing of desire that crashes against the confines of his body, needing something, needing more.

He moans as Sim slides a hand between his legs. "Sim." He knows he could come from this, rutting against Sim's clever fingers and thumb as he moves to the other side of Malcolm's neck, starting the whole mindbending procedure all over again.

“C’mon Malc,” Sim says, dragging his cheek down Sim’s chest, his stubble rough, his broad shoulders perfect for holding onto. Malcolm runs a hand down his back, feeling the line of his spine, thinks of metal screws and the evidence of previously broken bone Phlox has detected in twenty-one separate places in his own body. Then Sim does something distracting with his hand.

Malcolm moans. “Fuck.” The world bleeds down to the points of contact between them, the rhythm of Sim’s fingers and the rhythm of his own heartbeat a counterpoint in which their unexpected harmony sings. Malcolm could never have imagined this, not in all his years, but now that it’s happening… he bucks and keens.

“You’re so gorgeous,” Malcolm pants, “so determined. So strong willed. Fucking resplendent, you are.”

The weight of Sim on top of him is his anchor to reality, the smell of his sweat familiar and no longer wholly unpleasant. They spend some time kissing, mapping and remapping the space between them. They have all the time in the world now. Malcolm gets Sim off slow and steady, relishing how tightly Sim holds onto his hips, thumb digging into the same spot as a few days ago, the twist of heightened pain perfect as Sim brings him over the edge again.

As soon as he can breathe again, he tightens his grip, adding a twist to his rhythm, until—Sim moans as he spills. After that the only noise for a while is their heavy breathing and the hum of the ship.

"You know," Sim says, tracing invisible lines over his skin, taking his time to circle the moles he finds along the way. "I like this, with you."

"I like it, too." Malcolm takes his hand, makes sure to look him in the eyes. "I love you."

Sim's smile warms him like a million kisses of sunlight against his skin. “Love you too.”

Malcolm drops off his undersuit at the laundry on his way to sickbay. Sim is waiting for him outside the doors, vibrating with nervous anticipation. Phlox had called them in half an hour ago, asking they be present as soon as the last of his tests had finished running their course. Then, Malcolm assumes, they can start with the treatment, and with the help of fresh scans determine a new donation date. His stomach churns at the thought. It’ll be weird, Sim and Trip meeting, but… well, their lives go beyond strange at the best of times.

Inside, T’Pol is helping Phlox with some test tubes while Archer perches uncomfortably on the edge of a bed, his usually slicked back hair falling over his face in greasy locks.

“Doctor, Commander, Captain,” Malcolm greets, Sim following suit. The room looks brighter, more sterile than usual. The oppressively white walls threaten to suffocate him.

“Just one more minute,” Phlox says, voice a tightly wound coil of concentration.

To avoid sitting down, Malcolm stands, settling into a practice pose of relaxation. Sim hovers unhelpfully by Phlox’s side. It doesn’t take long for him to shoo him away, and for Sim to return to his side.

“Sorry about that,” Phlox says a few minutes later, “but we had to be sure.”

“Sure about what?” Sim asks, his voice stretched thin.

Archer clears his throat, “Yes, do tell us, Doctor.” The bags under his eyes speak of the all-nighter he’d pulled helping with the prep for the shuttles.

Phlox doesn’t spare him a glance, though. All his attention is focused on Sim, his mouth set in an unhappy curve. “While performing all the tests to determine the viability of DLMTase I noticed a slight aberration, which I did not think much of until I consulted Commander T’Pol.”

“It indicated a significant difference in your brain’s EM field to that of the other humans on the ship,” T’Pol explains.

“Because the field gave me some of my memories, right?” Sim says, frustration and fear warring in his voice. Malcolm grasps his hand to support him.

“It goes beyond that,” T’Pol says regretfully. “It has tied all the memories you have formed while in the field to those it reflected back to you from Commander Tucker. The scan Doctor Phlox took after we started moving indicates—"

T’Pol hesitates. That scan must have been before he rushed to meet him, when Phlox told him the enzyme would work. “It appears that the relation between the field and your memory is more intimate than we had previously thought.”

The all too familiar staccato of Malcolm’s heart starts up, the rush of his blood carving out ever deeper routes through his body. Sometimes he’s sure that too much of himself will be scraped away and all that will remain is surging fear. “So once we leave the field…” Malcolm prompts when Sim doesn’t reply.

Phlox sighs, reaching to squeeze Sim’s arm. “You may lose both the memories you share with Commander Tucker and those you don’t. I’m so sorry.”

Malcolm realises then that Phlox’s focus had not been concentration but regret and sadness: the knowledge of being the bearer of bad news. Sim’s hand shakes in his, so Malcolm grips it tighter. There’s no way they can consider staying in the field for a second longer than they already are. And that means that Sim might lose his memory—he can’t—this can’t be happening.

“I’ll keep none of them?” Sims asks, sounding smaller than Malcolm has ever heard before.

Phlox shakes his head. “We can’t know for sure. The tests we just ran were inconclusive.”

“Aren’t memories physical things?” Malcolm asks.

“While it’s true that human memories form physical structures in the brain and leave their imprint on the body’s physiological response, myelinisation and overall structural growth…”

Phlox pauses, knowing that Malcolm understands about fucked up ways the body knows history more truthfully than any written account. Wounds may heal, but nothing is ever the same again.

“This has not happened in your case. The field had somehow prevented it, or in combination with your hybrid DNA…” but explanations fail him. Fail them all.

“Of all the things to happen!” Sim cries, ripping his hand from Malcolm’s as his temper consumes him. “It wasn’t enough for me to be born a freak! Now I might not get to keep my life?”

The words slice into Malcolm like shards of ice, spreading a freezing numbness through him and rooting him to the spot.

“Phlox, you promised me he could live normally!” Archer accuses, adding his raised voice to the mix.

Phlox stares at him with reprehension. “I did no such thing. His life may not be a normal one, but it’s a good one, the best we could give him. He’s a person, not just an experiment or missing part.”

Archer opens his mouth, but Phlox continues before he gets the chance to speak.

“The very existence of life in our universe is an incredible coincidence, one to be cherished instead of strangled. Your doctors on Earth take an oath not to harm. They swear not to play god, which by your personal definition, I have done as you asked me to do. Is that why this bothers you? Do you consider him so unnatural that his life is automatically abnormal?”

A hot threat of tears stings at Malcolm’s eyes. He remembers his father’s words, the quiet, deadly looks of his peers. He lets them pass over him like rain, kissing his skin and coating him, but not crossing inside himself. Not lasting forever.

“No… no I just meant…” Archer stutters.

“Meant what? Absolution of guilt about the line you crossed?” Malcolm spits. “That your regard for life is conditional?”

“I couldn’t have predicted this!”

“But you still created me,” Sim says, tears leaking from his eyes. “I’ve never been myself to you. I cannot say I am ungrateful to be alive just as much as I cannot say I deserved any of this.”

T’Pol catches his gaze in hers as Sim gulps down air, his struggle to breathe strangling the room. Malcolm doesn’t know what her eyes are trying to tell him. He thinks he sees shared worry reflected back at him. He had stood in this very same room, an unshaped mass of fear just beyond the horizon. It’s a fallacy to say they knew this would happen, but it is the validation of a pattern they have both experienced; another link that forges the chain of an unchanging history.

“I’ve never just been Sim to you. I’m a means to an end, a tool. I’m a hail mary concoction in a lab, your very own Frankenstein’s monster.” He says to Archer, looking down at where he’s sitting. “I don’t want to die.”

“I don’t want you to die, but I don’t want Trip to die either,” Archer presses.

T’Pol frowns in a rare display of emotion. “It is not up to you to choose. It is not up to anyone.”

“I regret the past, but that doesn’t change the present.”

“Yes,” Sim says venomously. “And as much as you would not _ask_ me to die for him, if it came down to it…”

Archer cringes, unable to look directly at Sim. “I would hope I would not need to ask.”

Across the room, T’Pol looks as miserable as he’s ever seen a Vulcan look. She isn’t shocked, though. Neither is he. He should be, like Phlox is, his mouth hanging open and reality warping in front of him.

But when has the question ever been direct, if not already an order?

There are orders shouted in the heat of battle, a life or death frenzy that becomes a part of you, a wound that lasts forever, blood not even an ocean could hide. And then there’s the figure in a room far, far away, his finger over a button and all the time in the world to rationalise. There’s the silencing of dissent that is taught as part of every facet of life, what is sacrosanct and what is desirable… who is to be sacrificed. Even now it is said that they have left hubris and hate behind, but that is all it is, something that is said, but not done.

To choose one life over another, to choose _for_ another in such a way… there is need, and responsibility, but no justification.

“You’re a piece of work,” Sim growls, pacing now, fists clenched. “You have no right to ask that of me.”

“So many people will die if we can’t go out there and negotiate with the Xindi,” Archer tries to explain, “and for that we need Trip. Our Trip, with all of his memories.”

The words feel worse than any physical confrontation, and Malcolm isn’t even the one they’re aimed at. He knows Archer has chewed Trip out like this before, but unlike Trip, Sim won’t forgive him so easily. Is it because he thinks Sim is stealing a life that isn’t his?

Archer’s face is a craggy mire of determination. Every fibre of Sim’s being tests Archer’s commitment to unfamiliar values and maybe he hates him for it.

“That look in your eye,” Sim points aggressively. “The same one you have now. Even as a child, I saw it. I’m not a usurper or a thief, I am my own person. _You made me_.”

“It was the right choice. You just weren’t supposed to have his memories!”

“And that makes a difference?” Malcolm all but snarls. Even as a justification to himself, it’s a poor one. They should all be able to ask more of each other than that. Is that not what this future they’ve survived into is for? To act decently and maturely, to the best of their ability? There’s no guarantee that even then, it will save them or stop anyone from getting hurt ever again. But that does not make life pointless.

“It shouldn’t,” Archer agrees.

“Couldn’t you have done more? Could I have done more?” Sim asks, expression simultaneously bordering on laughter and tears. Sim turns, finally facing Malcolm. What he sees on Sim’s face breaks his heart for the second time since they entered Sickbay. “Perhaps that is the pain of life, that we cannot do more.”

For Sim to be feeling guilty feels wrong. He’s devoted to the ship and her crew. He has given her everything. He may even give her his life. Shakily, he brings his other hand to cover Sim’s/

"The chain of command—" Archer says.

“Fuck the chain of command," Malcolm interrupts. Archer's jaw drops. Even Sim looks a little shocked, jolting him out of his fury. Malcolm continues, "Who are you to have that kind of power over someone? To try to?"

“Lieutenant," Archer says, brow stern and voice shaking.

"You are the finest commanding officer I have ever had, but you are wrong about this. There is no excuse for you to seek this kind of control, no justification that makes your approach a decent one. It may well be remembered as the right thing to do and you may in hindsight be absolved of feeling guilty, but in the moment of choosing you cannot know."

Malcolm knows history, understands that the present is no different, not really. He himself has felt that violence, had been cast as the victim of those who would eradicate what they deem unworthy and disgusting. He knows it goes beyond him, that there are circumstances and violence he cannot ever truly comprehend. A turn for the worse looms around every corner and he tries to prepare himself. And still it shocks him. And still the world offers up a new source of pain and grief.

"His life has no meaning, is that what you’re saying? Just because you think that his life has no value he shouldn't live it? Life is not about a question of worth, it simply exists."

Malcolm sucks in a deep breath, steadying how his gut sloshes around inside him. Morality is taught, right and wrong are words that people have made into meanings. Anything can become a weapon, even compassion.

“We are here, we have always been here. You cannot morally attribute one life more value than another. No one inherently deserves to die. There is no hierarchy for who to let die first. Where do you draw the line? When do you permit it to be moved, once it exists? One day it’s clones, the next it’s anyone with anything artificial as part of their body. History has countless precedents. It’s whoever you want to scapegoat, whoever who don’t like. You can kill us, you can silence us, but we will still have existed.”

T’Pol’s gaze slides between him and Archer, agitated. Phlox looks stricken, nauseated. Life may very well be the same across their worlds. This shared struggle of living. And in the face of an ever moving, indifferent universe, there comes that need for familiarity and safety, for an ethical consideration and the bestowal of justice.

“Look at us,” Malcolm cries, raging against the world and no one in particular. “Look at our crew. The past is not a closed book.”

Archer is not guided by the future, but the past. If the past is told and retold, entombed in justifications and the word of law, then it becomes untouchable and absolute. If you rely on previous precedents without analysing them from a perspective different from that with which it was created, you have no option of modifying your actions. You cannot act ethically.

Malcolm takes a quivering breath before continuing. "History lies: there are no ends, except those which we make. There are consequences. The shining future we dream of is possible, but we only ever have today. Sim is a person and you have no right to make these kinds of decisions about his life!"

He's breathing hard, driving shards of ice towards his heart, but they cannot touch him. They may pierce him until he bleeds out, land him in the brig and lose him his career, but they will not touch him. His compass points true north.

Sim reaches for his hand, very real, and very loved. What Malcolm would do, to change their circumstances, to give what he cannot give.

Immeasurable sadness holds him in the grasp of an ocean that stretches beyond every horizon, leaving only him and his rowboat and the numbers from one to one thousand to count over and over again. But as much as he is that ocean, he is still himself, and standing up for Sim reinforces the steel within him. He exists in that give and take, in that space between that no words can contain. And so he counts, and he is that action of counting, of remaining present, whatever the weather.

"It's not just his life," Archer says, helpless.

“No,” Sim agrees, “it’s not. But when you made me it wasn’t just my life either. Or mine and Trip’s. It was every live I could have lived. It is every life otherwise denied because of the ban on genetic manipulation. It is all those lives lost during the purges—the ones who didn’t die at the hands of the fascist tyrants but were killed by those who opposed them anyway. Don’t you understand?”

Archer shakes his head.

“You would determine my life from test tube to slaughterhouse. You take what you need from me, be it my brain or my heart or my hands, my voice or my labour. Humanity,” Sim waves his hands in mad spirals, “Earth. I have never seen it but I am its prisoner. I don’t fit the mould you made for me.”

“To make a person is a great responsibility,” Sim says, any greeness he had five days ago replaced with a deeply set weariness, creating the lines and wrinkles of his innermost self. “You cannot prematurely decide on what life will be, for yourself or anyone else.”

They can never know for certain if they would be making it out of the field alive without Sim. There must be versions of their reality where they don’t, as well. The conditions for this reality, just like the conditions that allow for life to occur in the first place, had to have been just right for them to enact their present. If Sim were any less dedicated and brilliant, if her had not had the right conversations at the right time, if his suggestion had not been heard by Nadia, if it had been a pilot other than Travis—

There may well have been uncountable other routes out of this deathly maze, but to linger on what ifs doesn’t change what’s happening in front of them. What they’re participating in. The life they’re living and choosing. Are they reaching out to each other, or giving in to the anticipation of fear, reaching for a weapon before the need arises, uncaring that a readiness to shoot holds as much consequence as actually shooting.

"Life isn’t just a series of choices to make. How you do matters. What you do matters. It matters because you and I both exist. We will both die some day, which makes this all the more important. I am as real as you are."

Malcolm tries to find something more to say or do. All of them in this room are problem solvers, but there are some problems too tightly interwoven with life itself for them to be answerable. There is no solution to this. Sometimes all that is left is outcomes. To not just let go, but to let go well. Malcolm isn’t ready for that.

“Whatever we can do for you… the crew, I’m sure, would be more than willing,” T’Pol offers, shifting the conversation. Archer looks on in silence. Whether he’s stunned or seething Malcolm doesn’t much care right now.

“I—thank you.” Sim softens in the face of compassion.

Then T’Pol does something Malcolm has never witnessed before. He recognises the way she arranges her fingers and raises her hand, the Vulcan salute, but not the words. “I grieve with thee.”

“Thank you,” Sim repeats.

"What about Trip?" Archer asks, sounding small and scared to lose his best friend.

They all care about Trip, and it’s not as if Malcolm has forgotten his friend laying dying in the room next door. He doesn’t want Trip to die, and he doesn’t want Sim to die either.

He swallows the guilt he feels that he’s glad it’s not his choice.

"I need to think," Sim announces. “Catch you later,” Sim says less harshly. A chaste kiss, then Sim leaves, taking all the warmth and life out of the room with him.

It hurts, a fresh wound bleeding across the surface of his entire world. The man he loves is going to die. He knows Sim. Even if he hasn’t reached his decision yet, Malcolm knows what he will choose. He knows what kind of person Sim is. Of course he secretly wishes Sim were more selfish, but the steel in him knows that then he would not be Sim, and he wouldn’t have him as anyone but himself. In that way Malcolm is selfish, and in his flaws, irrecoverably human.

“I just heard,” Hoshi says, wrapping Malcolm in her arms as soon as she sees him enter the linguistics lab. Her team filter out around them, leaving only displays he can’t read and the reassurance of Hoshi’s words. “I’m here for you.”

Tentatively, he reaches up, splaying his hands across her shoulder blades, returning the hug. He can’t see her face and for that he’s grateful. “It doesn’t seem real.”

She holds him tighter. “It’s so cruel how the people closest to us are here one day and gone the next.”

“Your grandfather, Michio…” Malcolm sighs. He feels her nod against his shoulder. It had been late, they had been drunk, and things that weren’t secret but had been left unsaid too long had spilled out. She squeezes him tighter.

“I miss him every day and I feel guilty on the days I don’t. I feel like I’ve forgotten to miss him, somehow.”

“He wouldn’t want you to be sad.”

“You never knew him,” Hoshi sniffles.

“But I know you, and that you understood each other.” Malcolm soothes a hand over her back. “So I know.”

“Sim won’t want that for you, either.”

“I might be sad forever, but it won’t be the only thing I feel.” The words feel uncomfortable. The whole thing is.

Remembering that Sim will be gone laps at him like waves. He knows it will only get worse tomorrow, once he’s actually gone. He’s lost people close to him before. It won’t feel real until then, and he’ll be ripped into the deep where the pressure crushes him past the point his body can handle. Yet somehow, it won’t kill him.

“We’ll all be here for you.”

A tear slips down his cheek.

There isn’t more to say for a while.

Distantly, he registers the flashing console Hoshi had been working on. “Sorry for interrupting.”

They pull apart, and Hoshi smiles at him sadly. “Don’t be.”

Malcolm tires to dredge up a smile for her. He can’t manage it.

“I was finishing off the translations Archer requested.” Hoshi leaves her hand on his elbow, acts as if she hasn’t noticed she’s doing it. Not subtle, but Malcolm appreciates it.

“To send to the Xindi?”

“Yes. T’Pol’s team have worked out that in three days we’ll be far enough away to send them. And since we’ll still be close, their signal will be strong.”

“We might not be alone for much longer.”

“Maybe we can help each other,” Hoshi says, the surety of her words strengthening their fragile hope.

The admirals and officers on Earth had commanded they go forth and fix things. Had ordered them to blunder in and destroy. To not only leave their regard for others behind, but to wilfully take and disavow dignity. To storm in, as if the galaxy was made up of heroes and villains. And they had. And it had been a terrible mistake that should never have happened in the first place.

They cannot not take back the hurt they have caused. But they could do better now. Hoshi looks at him with the same determination he feels.

Malcolm waits as she finishes, busying himself with a PADD. He has no mind for work, so he plays one of the games that Travis has got them all hooked on. The ball bounces around the screen as he tries to arranging the blocks into a maze it can traverse. He’s barely focusing, but it helps him force his thoughts into a steady static. It keeps him occupied until Hoshi looks up, eyebags dark under her eyes, but mouth turning up in a faint smile.

“Still stuck on level 64?”

“I can’t get this one damn corner sorted.”

She takes the PADD away from him and sits beside him. “Don’t fret. T’Pol’s also stuck.”

“Which level?”

“72.”

Malcolm would usually laugh, but his chest is too tight and too heavy. For a few seconds he wants the static back, but the desire is fleeting. It can only prolong the inevitable. And he would rather go in lucidly. Calm is often underrated as preparation.

“And how are things with you and her?” He could use some good news, not that it would help or erase any of his pain or grief.

Hoshi smiles while she considers her words, then smiles wider. “Good, they’re good.” The way her cheeks flush say the rest.

As insurmountably heavy as his heart is, it still manages to swell with affection. 

All the loss across human history, and they’re still so bad at dealing with it. Or maybe it’s something that can’t be dealt with, not with weapons or words. Loving can hurt and heal in equal capacity. It is as much a part of life as existing—breathing, feeling, or whatever it is you choose to mark yourself as human. For Malcolm, his heart has always been what connects him to his place in the universe.

Being with Sim… it has reminded him of how closed off he is in comparison to the rest of the world. But Sim has also showed him how he doesn’t have to change to have what he sees others have. He just needs to act.

A console beeps, then flashes. Scrolling across the screen is a reply in a language Malcolm can’t read, but might one day learn to.

“Coordinates,” Hoshi gasps.

“They replied,” Malcolm states, feeling as if they’ve crossed some invisible line. He never thought he’d feel such a thrill at first contact.

Hoshi is tapping away at the console, her manicured nails looking like shiny moons in orbit.

“The route looks dangerous. All this death, all this lost hope, and we still have no assurance that a spatial anomaly won’t rip us apart at any moment,” Hoshi sighs. In her gaze he can feel how her time on the Enterprise has aged her.

“But we have a new heading,” Malcolm says, thinking, _and the next impossible thing to strive for. _

"Hey love," Malcolm greets, his voice sounding out the hollowness inside himself.

"Malc," Sim turns, sadness etched into all the lines of his posture, but his face still lights up, happy to see him.

Malcolm takes him in his arms, holding on too tightly, holding on while he still can. He’d hold him so tightly every day, even if they lived to be a thousand.

"I've made my decision," Sim says, cups his cheek, then lets go, tracing an invisible line down his throat and chest before curling his fingers into the fabric of his uniform. "I want to go through with the operation."

Malcolm makes the effort to look Sim in the eye.

He keeps the sadness inside himself at bay, pushing the turbulent waters down. He needs to be strong for Sim, so they can have whatever time is left, but... he still rages against it, that drumbeat in his chest driving with him into anger and frustration, that helpless desperation wanting to bite its way out of him in a scream. Sim saying the words makes it all that much more real, no matter how many times he’s rationalised it to himself in the past few hours.

Why should Sim die? Why should he want to? Why is life made up of such terrible choices?

“I am Trip and I am not Trip. It feels cheap to say I am a version of him, aren’t we all always versions of our previous selves? None of us truly know who we will be tomorrow.” Sim bites his lip. “Can we even say we knew who we were yesterday?”

“Your life is not invaluable if you lose your memory.”

“No, no. That’s not—I don’t see it that way at all Malcolm." Sim twists his arms and grasps Malcolm's hands in his, drawing them up to his chest, to hold him close, precious and near. "I am myself, and I am my choices and my actions. If I am free to do as I wish then this is a part of that too."

Malcolm kisses their linked hands, knowing which fingers are his and which are Sim's by feeling first, and then by the subtle differences, his paler skin, Sim's light hairs, the tiny freckles he's seen up close.

"It tortures me to think it is what was designed or intended for me. That I was born to feed another in this way." Sim bites his lip. "But I’ve realised that if I let my hate of them stop me from listening to myself, then they would win.”

"What do they know?" Malcolm murmurs. He knows the old arguments, those philosophers sat at their desks who would ask, _is it a rational mind? Can this being suffer? How _can_ we know?_ Not stopping to consider whether that certainty matters, or if that should be their priority, instead continuing to write cages with their words.

“Whoever you are tomorrow, I’ll still love you,” Malcolm says, feeling hollow as an empty grave, but solid as the earth it is made of. He could not love someone who is not true to themselves; who does not believe in what they do. “You’ll always be someone I love.”

“No one should have to suffer what they’ve put on us,” Sim whispers, cautious to mention what lies beyond the wave breakers of Malcolm’s privacy even now.

Malcolm moves Sim’s hands to rest on his undershirt, the black one that zips up to his neck and reaches to his wrists. He usually wears it out of shame or for warmth, but these past few days his body has had a new history writ all over. Stray scratches, love bites, and a lingering lover’s touch.

It’s not a rebirth, but a reformulation of who he can be. He feels the same when he masters a new move when he fights or feels the muscle memory for any skill lock into place. Who he is becomes a small bit more complicated.

He’s not the same person to any two people in the world—in the universe. Who he is with Sim, who Sim sees him as, he loves being that person. And that Malcolm is as much himself as any of the other people he’s been. When Sim dies, Malcolm won’t die, nor will that part of him, but it will be as much a ghost as Sim, alive only in memory. He may have new lovers, new languages shared only by himself and another—but he loves Sim and will love him as long as he lives.

As long as he loves, he’ll hurt. Not constantly, but inside himself he is all his selves, younger and wiser and happier and more reckless selves, selves that cry out for violence, for joy, for reminiscence, for wildness and understanding. Who he is now will not be lost. A part of him will yearn for Sim, this moment staying as fresh as it is now. He knows it will become the past. Like the child he once was he will become an increasingly distant memory, treasured, and called upon for strength in times of need.

“Malc,” Sim whimpers, pressing his face into Malcolm’s shoulder. “If only there was a life for us in this universe."

“I wish it was some anomaly, or force of the universe we couldn’t possibly hope to control…” Malcolm murmurs.

There is the field, falling fast behind them now. There is the whole damned expanse, a graveyard being built around them. But that is not why they are here, or why Sim must die. Human history is longer than anyone can remember, and remembering is always inaccurate. Laws are not morals. They are the print of the boot worn by those in power.

Khan and his followers took their laws to their inevitable end, fulfilling the harm they prophesied. Binding ethics into mandates takes away that malleable moral consideration, robbing life of its vitality and capacity for imagination. To count only some as human is both the first and final step towards atrocity.

“It would be easier,” Sim agrees.

Reality persists.

If Malcolm could, would he really seek to control it? If he could weave them any life they wanted into existence, would they have still chosen it? If death never comes, do we truly live?

“But then we might not have this,” Malcolm says. It definitely wouldn’t be the same. All the joys they share, the comforts and the strange, heady relief of endurance—they would disappear, too.

He feels the weight of his palms, slides them over the solid mass of Sim’s body. Soon this will all be an untouchable dream. In his darkest hours he might question if this ever happened at all. But it did. It is happening right now.

Before, they will be alive together. They have this moment, and that which they may give each other. Malcolm kisses him then, with all his longing and love; with all the blood thrumming through his veins. Alive, _alive_, Sim is so very much alive right now. His fingers scrabbling, hot puffs of breaths and a soundless chuckle—and Malcolm will carry how Sim touches him with him, memories sinking through his skin like dye rushing into water, that may look to disappear, but actually diffuses into every available space.

They kiss for a while, trading touches and sweet nothings. Malcolm takes comfort in the broad set of Sim’s body and lets Sim bury his face in his neck. There is nothing for a time but the imprint of Sim against him, the way they make themselves fit against each other as though it is some miracle.

Sim resurfaces after a few minutes, face splotchy. He looks tired in ways years don’t describe.

"The hand I was dealt was not decent or right, but so many of us cannot claim ours are. But no matter what may be done to us, what they may try to do to us—whether you believe in fate, or have faith in love—we get to choose how to play our hand,” Sim says.

If only there was no threat of war knocking at their door. If only cloning wasn’t banned and his memories weren’t part of an electro-magnetic field that would have killed them. But no human being has ever been unconnected from the world, born apart from time or place, from memory or other faces.

Sim continues, his ragged voice breaking in waves against the shell of Malcolm’s ear. “I was once a child, but now I am not. I take responsibility for all of it, Malc, for what I may or may not do. We all have our own questions and connections, immeasurable bonds tying us to the world that are not separate from us or unimportant. We affect the world around us, like any energy or force, and this is the direction I am choosing for mine.”

“Connections, or chains?”

Sim smiles against his cheek. “True, we don’t choose them all.”

As a child, life was a waking act of drowning. Even now, the child within Malcolm struggles and splashes, helpless. There is a child alive within them all. It is the child that cries out now, that lets him know when what is happening is abhorrent, no matter how weary or hardened the face he sees in the mirror tells him he is. It is all his years that rage against circumstance, that hate how there is nothing they can do… that all he can do is say goodbye as best he can.

But there is also the part of him that understands that it is lucky they have the chance to say goodbye at all. He is determined to do it well.

“I love you. Never doubt that. I don’t just love you because of this,” and he tugs, pushes, twists—touching, unsure if he means the sex, or kindness, Sim himself, or the togetherness that he has with him. “I love you. I feel safe with you. I trust you.”

Malcolm has problems with trust. Internal rulebooks full of handwriting so small his wrist can’t have been anything but painful and cramped as he penned the barricades to keep himself safe. He has unwritten rules his body listens to. And even if by them he had to leave Sim, to disavow a life with him in it, he wouldn’t stop loving him.

It’s twisted, how he’ll stoop when he remembers his father’s thundering voice or mother’s perfume filled absence of touch. His sister eyes dead as a fish’s, as dead as his own must be. And still, he’d love them—cry and plead and destroy himself for even a chance of affection or comfort. How hard he tried to win those battles by trying harder than he ever had before. But being good never won that war. You have to throw the rulebook out instead.

Malcolm would still rather work himself half to death; he’s as shackled by his past as Sim is. But not as much as he used to be, and he resents that Sim doesn’t have the same chance he has.

“I love you in a way I didn’t know I could,” Malcolm whispers and clings to him. He’ll tell him. He’ll tell him everything before the end.

Sim clings back just as tightly, and Malcolm wishes he would never let go.

T’Pol catches him in the hall on the way to Engineering, cool gaze allowing for no excuses as she motions for him to walk with her and Travis.

“We need your support talking to the Captain.”

Malcolm raises an eyebrow at Travis’s uncharacteristically neutral expression. “Are we expecting trouble?”

Travis grimaces, waving his hand in a so-so gesture.

“And you need me because…?” Malcolm gestures at the empty hallway of the ship.

“To remind him of what is at stake.”

Something warm settles in Malcolm’s stomach. It doesn’t displace the cold ocean of terror and grief, but mixes into sweet agony. He enjoys feeling useful. He enjoys being wanted and needed by Sim. And as selfish as it feels, that is another thing he will miss. In part it’s because if someone needs him, then it’s less likely that they’ll leave him. But there’s the opportunity to help, too. That’s what he needs to stay focused on.

That’s what Sim would do. In fact, that’s always something he’s looked to Trip for. It’s what his friends are encouraging in him now.

“He’s got a reply from the sphere builders,” Travis explains.

The last time Archer took everything upon his own shoulders, alone, he… well. If he wasn’t asking for council, they would remind him that they demanded it of him. He may be Captain, but they were a crew. “Fair enough.”

Archer is waiting in one of the smaller conference rooms. One of the walls has a star chart projected on to, the tiny bright specks passing across Archer’s face and uniform like light shifting through shallow waters. He steps past the beams of light, becoming just a man again.

A machine in the corner bleeps and Hoshi steps forward, tired but triumphant smile on her face. “We have the last digit.”

Archer nods. “Travis, the coordinates.”

The lights rush around them, until a line is drawn between the pulsing speck that represents the Enterprise and a distant star. Two more anomalies stand between them and their new goal.

“It’s quite a detour from the intel we previously got,” Archer says.

“Could be worse,” Travis says, ever the optimist. Malcolm is glad that side of him wasn’t cowed by their ordeal.

“Sim will die for nothing! If we use Tarquin’s intel, hunt them down—”

“No. That’s not what he wants,” Malcolm says, wishing Sim was here himself.

Trip might want that, though Malcolm hopes that vengeance and resentment won’t eat him whole. Like they had almost himself. The barrel of a loaded gun is a tool, but to wield a weapon is transformative. He touches his stomach, picturing the steel there that keeps him afloat.

“A mission of peace is much more desirable than an attack,” T’Pol points out.

“Chances are that the resistance already know what we would find out there,” Malcolm points out. “And it does beg the question of why Tarquin wouldn’t tell us about them in the first place.”

Archer rubs his chin with his fingers.

“We should go meet them,” Hoshi says.

“We would be stronger with allies when we spearhead an attack against the Xindi council,” Archer decides.

“No—” Malcolm swallows, “we have to respect what they want.”

Archer looks chastised, but his words are too hasty. “Of course.”

“The answer is never to impose one’s will over that of another,” T’Pol says.

Travis nods. “It’s the same thing as the council is trying to do. They’re trying to decide for everyone.”

“Like the admirals demand we do,” Malcolm says. Governments, military generals, and whoever sits at the head of the family table: they all share a common trait. Power, and the desire to control others with it. Regimes of terror start small. Sometimes they stay small. And sometimes they fire planetkiller weapons. “And how the Spherebuilders are manipulating the Xindi, too.”

“They’re the foreign invasion force they think we are, but we won’t become,” Archer agrees, rage finally dropping from his shoulders. “We’ll meet them and proceed on their terms. We will not sacrifice Earth, but that isn’t what they want, either.”

_No, _Malcolm agrees quietly, _there__’s been quite enough sacrifice already._

That night Sim doesn’t say anything to Malcolm as he reaches for him, hands finding the tab of his zipper and the curves of his hipbones, drawing him close. They just hold on for a while, curled around each other, an inevitable collision of two people so tightly in orbit around each other.

“I’ve been thinking,” Malcolm says, the words hanging in the air like the feeling before a storm. He’s had plenty of time to. Sim’s been making the rounds, saying goodbye to the friends he has and giving his beloved engine a few last hours of TLC. “If you want a last name for your records, I’d be honoured if you took mine.”

“Malc, is this a proposal?”

“I’d—I wish I could do it right, b-but—” Sim’s hands shift to hold to hold him more tightly, calming him. Deep breath. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

Sim draws back, hooking a finger under Malcolm’s chin to angle his head. “Then I accept.” Sim’s eyes sparkle like water in rippling in sunlight, and Malcolm looks into them for a moment, their intensity short-circuiting his brain.

Sim kisses him, sweet as can be. It’s brief, yet firm. Like a wedding band, it seals their love between them, strengthening the unending rope that stretches between their hearts.

And when Sim lets Malcolm push him down onto the bed, it’s every bit as wonderful as he’s imagined a wedding night could be, except that it’s better because it’s real. Sim’s hands find his hips as Malcolm straddles him, smile eager and laughter sweeter than music.

Malcolm kisses him in all the secret places he likes, between his fingers and along the soft shell of his ear, down the meat of his chest and along the supple skin of his inner thigh. Splayed out beneath him, Sim is beautiful; clothed or naked, asleep or wide awake and wanting.

He holds onto Malcolm in a strong and steady anchor as Malcolm dips down, forgoing air for the thrill of diving into the depths of touch. He isn’t alone. Sim matches his every stroke, groans and laughter and whimpers escaping like bubbles of air rising to the surface. It’s nothing like the numbing depths he knows all too well, instead he is present and warm and aware of every touch and turbulent emotion. He is happy, yet sad. Delighted, yet desperate. He is free, heart heavy but also weightless.

Malcolm’s first orgasm of the night is a surprise, the slow and hypnotic pressure of Sim’s thumb and forefinger undoing him from within.

Sim follows him a while later, cresting a wave of pleasure as Malcolm teases him with his mouth, stretching him thinner and thinner until he’s ready to let it all go and give himself over. Then he takes him in his arms, whispering three magic words into his skin over and over.

He tugs until he can kiss Sim, unhurried and affirming. Sim is with him here now, that’s what matters.

“Maybe that’s all we are, stories we whisper to each other in the dark,” Malcolm muses.

The patterns Sim is tracing onto his back feel like the innards of the engine, similar to the blueprints Sim has hung all around the quarters he’s claimed as his own. There’s his silver suit. A copy of the War of the Worlds sits on the shelf alongside comic books and the PADD with the Lyssarian biography, and beside them something Malcolm hadn’t noticed before. A blanket pilfered from Shuttlepod 1. And beside that there is a copy of The Song of Singularity and a rock from the anomaly they’d been trapped in.

That would need a name now. Like how all of Sim’s possessions name this room his own. 

“You should tell me ours. You have a nice voice, even with the accent.”

Malcolm swats him gently, smiling as he turns so that they’re face to face. “Well, it all started when a brave and honest man asked a question and shook me out of my cowardice.”

Sim’s eyebrows go up. “Not with an honest man’s desperate decision? Or an explosion?”

Malcolms schools his expression into a thoughtful one. “Well, technically everything we know did start with a very big bang…”

Sim pinches him lightly.

“No, it all started that moment you came to me in engineering determined to help.” And then Malcolm tells him all the rest, stumbling and stuttering in places, pausing for kisses or backtalk, but forcing himself to tug the shipwreck of his self up to the surface for Sim to see.

By the end Sim is pulling him down for around round of deep sea pleasure, their bodies moving as if there was no other reason to be alive.

After, they lie in the cramped bunk, Malcolm’s front is pressed against his back, his cheek resting against his shoulder. One arm is snaked around his waist, held in place by Sim’s iron grip.

“Did you ever solve the mystery of Trip Tucker?”

The memory comes to him quickly, clear and painful. Shuttlepod One. “No.”

Sim turns to face him. “I think you should try.”

“He’s not you, love.” Malcolm holds onto him a little tighter.

“No. But I think you might have a shot.”

“I have a 95% hit rate, but I don’t think it applies to hearts.” He wets his lip. “Where is this coming from?”

Sim wriggles, but is soothed when Malcolm presses a kiss against his shoulder. “When I’m gone, I’d hate for you to be alone again.”

“I have friends. Enterprise is my home.” He has not said as much, but when he thinks of Earth, the things he misses most are morning fog and an unreplicated cup of tea. It never really felt like home, he realises.

“For a while I didn’t know where my feelings ended and his began. But how could he not look at you like I do?” Sim strokes a line from his brow to the tip of his nose with his finger.

“Maybe I don’t want him to.”

Sim opens his mouth, words trembling between them. Whatever they are, Malcolm doesn’t want to hear them. He loves Sim for himself. Trip is his best friend, and it would be weird seeing him at first… seeing those same eyes look at him without the same affection, to be touched without the same intent… but he is not the man in front of him.

Malcolm almost gives in to the greedy desire to shut Sim up.

Is this the same insecurity talking as all that time ago, that never living up to the monolithic presence that haunts him?

“Maybe I don’t like the thought of you alone and unhappy.”

Malcolm pauses. Tastes his own sweat as he wets his lips. “Of course I’ll miss you. Of course I’ll be sad. But I love you _for you. _And he can’t just replace you.”

He reaches out to trace the shell of Sim’s ear, his cartilage so strong and warm under fingertips, but like the whole of the human body, so very breakable. Life is all that more precious because it ends.

Malcolm thinks of what it is to be a child. He thinks of the child he once was, straining and gasping for the chance to make his own choices, to speak and be heard, to not feel a constant need to run against some indeterminable force. He thinks of how his body feels now, strong, but ageing—slowly dying. But time is more often his friend than his foe, and it feels wrong to want to fight it now.

To stop fighting and focus on Sim instead. To come home from the cold and experience the warmth, instead of imagining it.

When Malcolm reaches out to touch, he knows he won’t lose this. To seek out others. To swallow his fear and help it wash his steel anew. He will carry Sim in his heart. He can still be all those things Sim sees in him, and more.

Malcolm grasps at his hair, and his neck, doing something less coordinated than kissing, but just as passionate. He moves his whole body, becoming fluid, gasping and sucking sliding down, down, until Sim holds him there, rutting against his muscled thigh.

He says something, sweet no doubt, or maybe it’s dirty this time. He did that once. Was filthy without being degrading. “Want you so bad,” Sim pants. _Want you too,_ Malcolm thinks, and rolls the nub of one his nipples between his teeth.

He comes like that. Then he’s too sensitive. He curls around Sim, lazily stroking his length as he leaves a hickey the size of Scotland on his shoulder. It’s slow, and it’s gentle. Sim rocks against him, not quite desperate, but not passive. He takes whatever Malcolm gives him. He turns his head to ask for a kiss, and Malcolm gives him everything he can.

Lips and tongue and body and heart. He sinks into Sim. His hand grabs lube and then his fingers are sliding into warmth. The angle could be better, so he shifts, distracting Sim with wet butterfly kisses across his stomach. He giggles and kicks. Malcolm grabs an ankle with his free hand.

They’ve play fought, with him pinning Sim down before giving him the blow job of his life. He’s been held, sitting on Sim’s lap with his strong arms around him and cock relentlessly pounding him into bliss. They’ve talked. They’ve laughed. They’ve held hands. They’ve been silent. They have, each and every time, been _with_ each other.

This time it is no different, and a small part of him believes that it will be like this forever.

“You said to me and all the pain later. Do you regret it?”

“Not for a second. Do you?”

“How could I ever regret you?” Sim smiles, his fingertips brushing across Malcolm’s cheek, his callous rough thumb tracing his bottom lip. As if to remember his face. To say goodbye.

He had asked Malcolm to be here with him at the end, before Phlox puts him under for the operation. Walking with him to sickbay had felt inevitable and awful, but somehow his legs had moved with as much strength as they ever have.

It had surprised them both when their fellow crewmates had lined the halls, standing shoulder to shoulder, saluting as Sim passed. To thank and honour him for his sacrifice, T'Pol had explained at the doors. She had offered neither Earth nor Vulcan salute, but had uncharacteristically rested her hand on Sim's shoulder, saying, "Everything we talked about, I mean it more than ever."

Sim had said his thanks, eyes shining with unshed tears.

“I love you,” Malcolm says, feeling his own tears welling. "I love you."

The three words are completely insufficient to express his feelings. His fears and hopes and dreams and desires, all the things he could ever say and all the things he would never do—but also, impossibly, containing them, and offering every life they could have in a single, rushed breath.

"And I you," Sim replies, fingers catching on Malcolm's collar to tug him in for one last kiss.

It sears, hotter than any star and sweeter than water in a drought. Malcolm clutches to whatever part of Sim he can reach, scrunching up his hospital gown and pressing himself close.

“This is what I was meant to do,” Sim says, half to himself. “I was meant to live.”

Malcolm’s heart breaks all over again. But there is something stronger, the steel in his stomach, that like the ship around them, has weathered many a storm. He holds Sim’s hand. “Goodbye my love.”

Sim winks at him. Mouths, _I love you _one last time, just for him.

As Phlox injects him, Malcolm smiles a smile of love. He watches Sim’s eyelashes flutter shut against his cheek, as if he is only falling asleep. He doesn’t let go of Sim’s hand until T’Pol pries it from his grasp.

Malcolm doesn’t believe in fate or destiny, except that which you make for yourself.

He had hung a plaque, adding Sim’s name to the wall just past the shuttle bay with the others. It serves as a memorial for all those they have lost. Apart from that tiny gesture he is rendered powerless. There is no going back to the past and changing the outcome. No saving Sim from circumstance. Even if he could, even if he did everything right, things would be different and Sim could still die anyway. 

Malcolm looks out the observation window, at the edge of the field receding behind them. Soon it will be nothing but a distant memory, a series of impressions and feelings relegated to the tomes of the past. He focuses on it for as long he can, watching the otherworldly swirls of purple and orange recede until he can no longer make it out.

Sim has gone beyond the night, somewhere he can’t reach. He touched his hand to the window. _Where must I go that I can find you? _

They all gather in the armoury, rows of blue uniforms crowding around the torpedo shell that houses Sim’s body. A proper burial for a sailor, or as Malcolm likes to think of him, deep diver of the stars. It was all once nautical, but no longer. Now it’s their own. With their own traditions, and own goodbyes.

“We will never forget what he did for us,” Archer begins, “or the ship that he loved so much.”

Malcolm takes a breath and opens his eyes, grateful that his unshed tears save him from seeing Archer’s face. He can’t cope with his bravado and stoicism now.

He wipes at his eyes with the flat of his thumb, not wanting to listen to Archer’s words. Hoshi had shown him a copy of the speech. He doesn’t particularly care for it. It doesn’t feel right to talk about him this way, using his death as another piece of propaganda.

Across the pod, blue eyes meet his. Trip looks at him, the same half seasick half confused look on his face as has been pasted on since he woke up and looked at the corpse wearing his face. His expression shifts, determination and concern furrowing his brows. It turns him into a living man wearing a dead man’s face.

Malcolm is glad he is alive, that his friend is with them, but he looks away. Hot tears drop onto the deck. They’ll get lost underfoot, eventually filtered away by the atmospheric cleansers. Their own ecosystem in their little world.

He had read once that grief was like an ocean, hat grieving is like being overcome with waves that would become less constant over time, but never abate. He is a compass needle, magnetised, and alone with no boat, no anchor, no shore….

He clings to the handle as he and Travis lift Sim up into the chute, in sync from torpedo drills and countless hours logged on the shuttles. A solemn nod. One last look at the place where Sim’s face is behind the cover. One last touch of his palm before they close the hatch and send him off to the stars.

The space Sim leaves in him is hollow, like the empty shells they use as caskets. It is like hunger. It remembers.

Sim already feels so far away from him; a memory he knows will never be fleeting, but remains evasive. As ever present as the morning dew, but gone too soon. Malcolm will be feeling this loss for the rest of his life.

Every now and then he will forget, just for a moment, and find something he wants to share with Sim and for a heartbeat he will feel free and light before reality drags him down beneath the surface.

It won’t last forever, grief is like life: it has an end. But it happens more than once. The agony he feels now will happen again every time he has to realises anew that Sim isn’t there. It will happen whenever he tries to catch his hand or share a thought. It will happen when he walks among the tall pine trees, sees the coral beneath the dip of waves, feels Earth’s golden sunlight and turn his head to see an empty space beside him. All this and so much more; all this and nothing less. The words he could say are not enough, there is too much inside him to ever be enough.

And that, Malcolm thinks, is what grief is. More than the ghost of an unlived life, haunting those who are left behind. More than all the unlived tomorrows. More than words can say.

Crossing the threshold of his quarters is all the permission Malcolm needs to drop his cracked facade of calmness. He sits down on his bunk, his nails biting into his palms. In his left hand, he holds his luck. In his right, the promise that it will run out. He pushes them together, his knuckles an uncomfortable zip, as if by pressing hard enough, he can let all the energy to be miserable seep out of his body and leave him a riverbed.

Out in the open ocean, even the lightest of breezes can tease the water’s surface into forming waves that swell to tremendous heights. The tops of waves move faster than the bottom, which is slowed by the seabed and is why the wave crests and crashes. He feels like the top of the wave, his insides spilling out of him and collapsing himself into the terrible aloneness that is now his world.

His eyes burn as he imagines Sim, pulling him in like the field did, a memory he may never leave if he’s not careful.

But time will pass, and he will change. He will grow apart from the memory, and that will hurt, no matter how old the wound becomes.

Taking a deep breath, Malcolm wipes his tears away so he can unlace his boots. Not bothering to get undressed any further, he gets under the covers, grateful for the weight of his duvet acting as a barrier between him and the rest of reality. He cocoons himself in, but as he rests his head on the pillow, something hard stops him.

Sitting up again, he reaches beneath it to pull out a PADD. The modded back with extra storage space makes it easily recognisable as belonging to Sim. He’d left it for him.

Settling back against his pillow, Malcolm turns it on and watches the small, pixelated NX-01 fly across the screen as it boots up. The document on the home screen, left there for him to find, makes him start.

_The Diary of Sim Reed_

Of course Sim would traverse his own death to hold him close one more time.

He opens it and reads the first entry. He would read on, but he’s crying again. He will keep this piece of Sim safe. There is no doubt in his mind why Sim left it for him. With this, another story can be told, another voice heard beyond a shining moment. He will guard it, because it’s not just anyone’s voice, it’s Sim’s_. _Even now, he’s casting Malcolm a lifeline.

His grief breaks and he sobs, his slow sadness not keeping up with what this means—what it can mean—what Sim wants it to be able to mean. His misery drags, causing his waves of grief to crash and crash again.

He holds the PADD in his hands, his body curling around itself. The bunks are too small for two grown men, but without the cramped, warm line of Sim’s body it feels too large. It is not a space that can be filled.

In sleep, he’ll spread out, limbs reaching out for arms that might hold him as he dreams. For now, he opens a new file and begins to write.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 4 is an epilogue only, hopefully it won't take me almost a year to write it this time


End file.
